Inside "World Focus": How a Country Gets Chosen Each Year

Choosing a World Focus country isn't a popularity contest among film industries - a country with a smaller commercial industry but a genuinely distinctive history in children's cinema can make for a far more compelling spotlight than a country that simply produces a lot of content.

What programmers are actually looking for is a story with real shape: an institution, a movement, or a body of work that changed how that country's filmmakers approached young audiences, ideally with enough historical depth to build a real timeline rather than a single highlight reel. Iran's Kanoon institute - founded in 1965 and directly responsible for training some of world cinema's most influential directors specifically through children's filmmaking - is exactly that kind of story, which is why World Focus 2027 looks at Iran.

Because World Focus carries no competition, the section has room to do something a competitive slate can't: show a rough early work next to a polished later one from the same tradition, letting an audience watch a country's whole approach to children's cinema develop rather than judging a single snapshot of it.