Children's games, children's views: long before the genre of children's films emerged that addressed children directly at eye level, children's characters were protagonists with a different view of the world time and again in the cinema. Through the everyday life of children, their play and their perception, films convey unusual approaches to history and contemporary life reality. Children's characters embody utopias or social deficits, sometimes they also challenge us to play with aesthetic forms. An example of this is the film "Kinder sind keine Rinder" (1969) by Helke Sander, which was controversial at the time. From today's perspective, it can be described as the first "children's film" with a classic auteur concept; it was aimed at adults, but for Helke Sander it was also a "film for children". Our collection "Kinder schauen dich an" (Children look at you) shows films from the holdings of the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin and brings together mostly rarely seen works in which children's characters open up new perspectives on film and history.