"...abysmal songs, absurd dancing, tacky costumes – and we wouldn’t want it any other way."

At the end of last year I was asked by PBS to design their logo for the local competition that leads to Junior Eurovision. It was the first time I had heard of the junior version of the European festival. Daniel Testa went on to win the Junior Eurosong and represent Malta in Cyprus with great verve and pizzazz.

The title above is how Tim Robey described Sounds Like Teen Spirit, a new popumentary released this month in the UK. It's "a cross between Borat and Little Miss Sunshine" according to Jamie Jay Johnson of The Telegraph. I have only seen the latter and it's one of the favourites in my DVD collection.



Kev Geoghegan writes about some of the protagonists in director Jamie J Johnson's film:

There's 12-year-old Mariam, raised in a crumbling, Soviet-era high rise in Gori, 47 miles west of Georgia's capital Tbilisi, and the birthplace of Josef Stalin.

Yiorgos, a doe-eyed imp from Cyprus, goes fishing with his dad but hasn't landed a single fish in two years.

In one of the documentary's many heart-wrenchingly honest exchanges, he admits he is bullied and called "gay" at school because of his interest in singing and dancing rather than football.

Bulgarian hopeful Marina, 14, of the seven-piece Bon Bon, had a comparatively luxurious upbringing in a large house with a swimming pool but exhibits a kind of sadness and maturity beyond her years.

In a genuinely moving segment, she volunteers the information that her businessman father has recently left her mother for another woman.

She hopes he will see the documentary and come home.

I shall be looking out for an appearance by the sweet Daniel but I have a feeling he doesn't feature amongst the young chosen ones.