Small Soldiers
What better time than the holiday season to dive into the wonderful world of toys? Cinema has always loved to use its magic to fulfill an eternal childhood dream: seeing toys come to life. Naturally showcasing animated films, this series takes us at the frontiers of imagination, fantasy, and dreams through movies where toys are very well alive, albeit in different ways. By turns strange, amusing, wonderful, or unsettling, these toy stories inevitably lead us to reflect on our own humanity, while always managing to strike a chord deep within us.
Preceded by short film Toys by Grant Munro
In front of a toy store window, the children’s wide-eyed wonder turns to dread as the toy soldiers begin to wage a merciless war against one another. A classic of Canadian animated cinema.
While filling in for his father at the family toy store, a teenager decides to order some new action figures — a commando unit of soldiers and a team of monsters... But soon, the two groups wage a terrifying war. A biting satire of American militarism and violence as entertainment.
Joe Dante
Joe Dante is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and critic. Like many American filmmakers of his generation, he was trained at New World Pictures, a studio founded by Roger Corman in 1970. He gained recognition with Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1981), both horror films with a parodic or tragic tone, before achieving mainstream success with Gremlins (1984). Despite this, he was gradually sidelined by Hollywood studios due to his originality and irreverent tone. Still, he directed a sequel to Gremlins (1990), Small Soldiers (1998) and a few independent films, but devoted most of his time to television.
