The 16th annual Family Film Festival kicked off Friday, taking place at the Regent Theatre in Arlington and Studio Cinema in Belmont, but with Monday’s concluding bill inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. exhibited at The Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.
Put on by the Belmont World Film organization, the festival provides programming for the wee ones, even into the 3- to 6-year-old range. Opening night brought silent films by George Méliès (recall Ben Kingsley playing the French filmmaker in Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”) with live musical accompaniment. Weston Woods Studios has returned to the festival, including with Sunday’s “Laugh Out Loud With Mo Willems” (at 12:15 p.m. in Arlington).
At the Brattle, Monday begins with a program of animated films about King and his contemporaries. Then comes animated versions of “The Highway Rat” and “The Gruffalo,” a double bill based on the works of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler – the former about a swashbuckling rat with a penchant for buns and the latter revolving around the adventures of a cagey mouse – with a host of celebrity voice actors, including David Tennant and Helena Bonham Carter. There’s the East Coast premiere of “Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver” based on the book by German author Michael Ende (“The Neverending Story”) and bolstered by some amazing special effects as it tells the story of an adoptee finding his family and himself. The MLK day programming concludes with the documentary “Crossroads,” about a group of at-risk African-American students at a charter school in North Carolina who start a lacrosse team and win a state championship. The director, the coach and a player will be on hand for a Q&A moderated by WBUR and Boston Globe sports reporter Shira Springer.
For tickets, schedule and information, visit belmontworldfilm.org.
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