Crin-Blanc

1953, France, directed by Albert Lamorisse

It's not clear to me whether Lamorisse consciously intended his film as a "children's film," but children certainly respond to the picture particularly well: like his subsequent Le Ballon rouge, there's almost no dialogue, and even a very young child can easily follow the action and become quite caught up in the attempts of a young boy to tame a wild horse on the Camargue (the whole film is shot on location, and there's considerable anthropological interest to the portrait of a society that has, presumably, changed quite considerably in the interim). That said, I did have a little trouble explaining the slightly mystical ending, though fairly quickly the request to replay the film overrode any lingering concerns.