Animated film gets super-strict rating in Canada.

Every now and then, I talk about the fact that the Canadian ratings systems tend to be more lenient than the American system — here in B.C., films like Witness (1985) and The Castle (1997) and Slumdog Millionaire have received PG ratings despite being rated R south of the border — so I may as well note those rare occasions when a film gets an even stronger rating up here. Waltz with Bashir, an animated documentary coming out in the next few weeks, is rated R in the United States for “some disturbing images of atrocities, strong violence, brief nudity and a scene of graphic sexual content” — but here in British Columbia, it is rated R for an “explicit sex scene”. That may sound like it’s basically the same rating, but it isn’t; the Canadian equivalent of the American R rating is the 18A rating, which is what this film received in Ontario. The Canadian R rating is more like the American NC-17 rating: no children get into the theatre, even if they come with an adult.