This utterly beguiling and idiosyncratic cine-essay by critic and film-maker Mark Cousins is a personal journey through the subject of children on film. It was first shown at last year's Cannes film festival and is now on release here: a brilliant mosaic of clips, images and moments chosen with masterly flair, and accompanied by Cousins' own gentle, ruminative, almost murmured voiceover. Just as in his mighty television series, A Story of Film, Cousins dances nimbly between films old and new, cleverly intuits the connections, and digresses into the history of art, as well as into that of his own family.

A Story of Children and Film could be read as simply the story of Cousins himself, through film, and his own refusal to reproduce the cynical/knowing tone of modern grownup criticism. Sometimes he chooses very familiar movies, such as ET and Kes, and with absolute assurance, moves to the more obscure and neglected works, such as Mohammad-Ali Talebi's mysterious Willow and Wind (2000). Wittily, he juxtaposes Shirley Temple in Curly Top (1935) with the theatrically minded children in Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (1982), and turns on a sixpence to find Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St Louis (1944), featuring former child star Judy Garland. In so doing, he creates a new canon for us to ponder. Almost single-handedly, through sheer evangelism, Cousins is elevating the 1949 Danish short film Palle Alone in the World to cinephile classic status.

He challenges us to put aside the dual child-actor stereotypes of over-rehearsed showponies, or social-realist mini-saints, and see that children are actually often very guarded and wary on film. On screen, they may be similar to the ex-children we all grow into. This is such a rich, generous documentary study.