Telluride Film Fest's Sunday at the Palm presents "A Little Princess"

19 Apr Telluride Film Fest's Sunday at the Palm presents "A Little Princess"

The Telluride Film Festival's “Sunday at the Palm” series presents "A Little Princess" (1995). The FREE event takes place Sunday, April 24, 4 p.m. at the Michael D. Palm Theatre. The movie is rated G and the running time is 97 minutes.

Based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett ("The Secret Garden") and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, "A Little Princess" is sure to inspire the very young and young-at-heart.

Nominated for two Academy Awards, "A Little Princess" tells the tale of Sara Crewe (Liesel Matthews), a girl who uses imagination and a positive attitude to escape the demands of a difficult headmistress in the cloistered world of a new boarding school.

Sara's story begins when she is forced to leave her childhood home in India because her father (Liam Cunningham) enlists to fight for the British in WWI. He moves her to New York City, where Sara is enrolled in the school her late mother attended, Miss Minchin’s Seminary for Girls. Because of her gift for storytelling and a generally warm and friendly personality, Sara quickly becomes popular, much to the displeasure of a foul-tempered headmistress, Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron). The jealous woman does everything in her power to crush the girl, but Sara has an ace in the hole: she believes every girl is a powerful princess.

"'A Little Princess' exquisitely recreates the ephemeral world of childhood,” wrote Rita Kemply of The Washington Post, “An enchanted kingdom where everything, even make-believe, seems possible. Where decrees are made to be broken, save one that is inviolate: ‘All girls are princesses . . . even if they wear rags or are not pretty or smart.’ The hallmarks of a true princess, as this nourishing story teaches, are such qualities as kindness, courage, and imagination.”