The documentary format is one that is often abused, most recently it has become highly politicised through both overt (Michael Moore) and covert (Larry Charles) means. It is also appropriated to make an essentially fictional story look real (American Teen) and even deployed as a storytelling device within traditional fiction films (Cloverfield). But when documentaries are at their best, they are used simply to frame beautiful stories that exist in the real world.

They avoid bias and artifice as the devil’s tools and, with a few notable exceptions, they embrace their involvement as a narrator with a part to play: not a conductor orchestrating their output.

Sounds Like Teen Spirit is one of these documentaries. It’s subject? The 2007 Junior Eurovision song contest. Surprising as this may sound, the junior pision of one of the most politicised, satirised and generally derided competitions has been selected as the subject for a feature-length documentary. Following the fortunes of four entrants from the national heats right through to the final, the film captures the youthful exuberance of the whole experience perfectly.

What’s more, director Jamie J. Johnson has struck gold with his subjects. As well as exuding the excitement and energy of any number of their grown-up counterparts, they had plenty of surprises to offer. Private interviews gave cautious glimpses into the private lives of the children behind the soon-to-be European icons. And these were lives that were not just surprisingly trusting and open, but full of troubles, joys, hopes and fears that tug at the heartstrings without the need to rely on the melodramatic trappings of archetypal teen drama.

But a key reason that Johnson succeeds so resoundingly here is his complete lack of pretension. He goes into the competition with an eye for the wry and an ear ready to listen, and this shines through in every second of footage that reached the screen. He wins the trust of the children expertly, and refuses to push them too far when they offer up their innermost feelings to the camera. These moments contrast brilliantly with the bombastic stage personas we see when these kids belt out their big numbers on stage.

The one problem is perhaps that Johnson tries not to be too serious, montages of ‘pided Europe’ at war throughout the past few centuries do little to undermine the contest itself through sarcasm, and he would have won more laughs relying on the sporadic slip-ups of the kids and the show organisers. More footage of the tearful Georgian TV presenter following their nation’s performance would have been great for some laughs, as would the insane presenters of the contest itself. But overall the film is a resounding success, and one that goes a long way to showing that filmmakers would do well to forget the adage about working with children…