Children in Films

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see
him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.”

—Shirley Temple (1928-2014)

By Ercument Akman

The first children’s films emerged during the early cinema period. As the film industry developed, the number of movies made for children and with leading roles for children became prominent. Early Turkish Cinema, in films such as Muhsin Ertuğrul’s “Şehvet Kurbanı” (1940), featured child actors as part of the story, playing the daughter and the son.
Being a child actor and performing in an adult world is stressful and difficult. When kids are naturally talented, their performances go down in film history. Shirley Temple was easily the most popular and famous child star of all time, acting, singing, and dancing at the age of five.
Türkiye’s answer to Shirley Temple came 25 years later with Zeynep Değirmencioğlu. Memduh Ün started the trend by directing her in Ayşecik a 1960 film about a father imprisoned for murder and his little girl finding the real culprit. The period of child actors and “child stars” began when Ayşecik became a pop culture box office phenomenon.
When audiences watched her, they saw not a child but a young female beyond her years helping everyone. She mostly portrayed the same Ayşecik character, living in the big city with her poor family and their never-ending problems, which were only to be solved with her charm and street smarts.
When she reached her teen years in the 1970s, the film studios followed this proven formula with fresh faces and even with the real-life cousin of Değirmencioğlu as Ömercik and others: Yumurcak (The Little Menace), Afacan (Little Rascal), Sezercik (Little Sezer), and Gülşah.
For financial survival against the impact of the newly emerging novelty of television, Turkish cinema soon directed its attention to exploitation and pornography for the big screen. The children’s films as a genre left the cinemas. Families stayed home. Legendary weekly sold out galas at Pangaltı’s Inci Cinema became a distant memory and its screen soon went dark.

A Future for Children in Films
With the emergence of a new Turkish cinema, child actors and child characters returned with realistic roles, such as Tunç Başaran’s 1989 film Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar (Do not Let Them Shoot the Kite), about a child’s accounts of life in prison, and Reha Erdem’s Beş Vakit (Five Times A Day) of 2006, a look at life in a village through the eyes of children.
After the nineties, independent filmmakers preferred to tell adult stories by focusing their attention on film festivals. They found it almost impossible to secure screen time for their art films in the strictly controlled commercial cinemas catering solely to commercial filmmakers fighting for box office dominance. Today, the old-style film-making production houses rarely exist, and new producers put their faith into so-called TV Serials “dizi” that only include token child actors.
Year after year, animated films catering to children dominated the Turkish box office. 2024 was no different, with children’s and family films topping the charts. These films appealed to the demands of young filmgoers crowding shopping center multiplexes after massive advertising campaigns.
Can we see a future in films with children in significant roles again in this environment?
A solution can be found in Iranian cinema, which has long been celebrated for storytelling with a focus on children in its narratives at the center of their stories. Of course, Iranian films are the product of a state-supported cinema.
A reciprocal environment exists in Türkiye. The Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism is allocating ever-increasing funding1 for film productions. A national cinema can be supported in a structured fashion, exploring themes of justice and the human condition by evoking universal emotions, highlighting the resilience of children, and offering sharp critiques of an adult society seeking direction.
This approach can find commercial success and public approval. If realized these films can also bring more international recognition to Turkish films. That would be another target for Türkiye, who is seeking universal approval for her soft power in cinematic arts and culture.
See you at the movies. ■