The documentary Babies follows the first year of, clockwise from top left, Ponijao from Namibia, Bayarjargal from Mongolia, Hattie from the U.S. and Mari from Japan. (Alliance Films)

Like its infant stars, there is something refreshingly pure about Babies, the new documentary by French director Thomas Balmès screening at this year's Hot Docs festival in Toronto. There is no narration on the soundtrack to tell us what to think. There are no adult talking heads to chip in with their parenting views. The film simply tracks four lively babies in their progress from birth through their first year.

'I wanted to give a baby point of view, just immerse you in a baby's world for 80 minutes.'

— director Thomas Balmes

Each child is from a different culture: Ponijao is a little girl born into the Himba tribe in Namibia; Bayarjargal lives a nomadic life with his herder parents in Mongolia; Mari resides with her Japanese family in the high-rise heart of Tokyo; and Hattie dwells in hip San Francisco. As the film follows them concurrently, we see each one reach the common milestones of infancy — sitting up, crawling, eating solid foods, walking — while they discover the unique features of the place they have been born into. The result is an eloquent illustration of how all human beings are fundamentally the same, yet how our physical and cultural environment shapes us from the moment we emerge from the womb.

Producer Alain Chabat, who came up with the idea for the movie, pitched it to Balmès as a wildlife documentary about babies, and Balmès ran with the idea. He embedded himself with the film's four families over the course of two years, patiently observing his tiny subjects and shooting some 400 hours of footage.

"It was just me and a camera and a lot of time," Balmès says during a late-morning interview in Toronto on the day of the film's premiere. "And we let reality speak for itself."

His patience paid off with some priceless scenes, like wide-eyed Bayar watching as a goat drinks from his bathwater. Hattie methodically peeling an entire banana. A toddling Ponijao learning to balance a tin can on her head. Balmès shot much of the film at the children's eye level. Their parents, if not absent altogether, are often barely in the frame.

"I wanted to give a baby point of view," he says, "just immerse you in a baby's world for 80 minutes."

However, the parents are very much present in the context of their children's upbringing. The film's anthropological fascination comes in watching the differences and similarities in the way these babies are being raised. Ponijao's situation would warm the heart of Hillary Clinton — the little girl is tended, if not exactly by an entire village, then by an extended family of mothers and children. Bayar and his older brother — rugged Mongolians in the making — seem to be left much to themselves, both in the family's yurt and on the grasslands. Urbanites Hattie and Mari are only children who get their first taste of socialization at parent-and-tot playgroups.

The tall, grey-bearded Balmès, whose previous documentaries have captured a New Guinea tribe's take on Christianity (The Gospel According to the Papuans) and the Hindu response to the European BSE crisis (Maharajah Burger), says he's always been interested in questioning Western attitudes and assumptions.

"I'm always trying to shift perspective on how we believe that the way we do things is the only way to do things." For Babies, he says, he set out do the same perspective shift with parenting.

Balmès also wanted to play with the contrast between the four countries and cultures represented. "I chose four places at different development levels in [their] relationship with technology," he explains. "From the absolutely zero technology of the Namibian family to the science fiction of Tokyo, where you feel like you're in Blade Runner. There, the space is so small, people are living in tiny [pods] almost, [compared with] the gigantic spaces of Mongolia and Namibia."

Looking at the timeless pastoral worlds of Ponijao and Bayar, a Western viewer may be tempted to view their lives as idyllic. Both babies spend much of their time outdoors. Ponijao is seen slurping water straight from a stream and studying the ever-present flies like a tiny entomologist, while Bayar roams freely among his family's livestock. Mari, in contrast, sees her first large mammals behind glass at the zoo, while Hattie gets her exercise indoors in a Jolly Jumper.

Director-cinematographer Thomas Balmes on location in Bayarjargal's home in Mongolia. (Alliance Films)

Balmès himself shares that longing for a simpler way of life. The father of three children — ages three, five and seven — he came away from the film questioning his own parenting. "I deal with these questions personally. I wake up in Paris and wonder, Is this the right environment for three young kids?"

With a playful score by Bruno Coulais (Coraline, Winged Migration) and a bouncy Sufjan Stevens ditty as its theme song, the film's overall tone is lighthearted. But it doesn't only offer warm and cuddly moments. We see infants squabbling and being picked on by older children, and one baby gets a spanking. Poor little Mari, frustrated with a toy, repeatedly throws herself on her back and kicks her legs in anger. There is also a nerve-wracking episode where Bayar sits in the grass among moving cattle, seemingly at risk of being trampled.

Balmès assures me that no babies were harmed in the making of his motion picture. In the case of Bayar and the cattle, the baby was safe, he says. "The mother was not far away, she saw [the situation] and said, 'OK, that's fine.' If it was fine for her, it was fine with me. I was not there to babysit, and I made that very clear to the parents. Of course, if it had been really serious and scary, I would have left my camera and interfered."

Balmès is quick to point out that all the families in the film are well-off by their countries' standards. In choosing the participants, "I wanted four equal environments in terms of quality of life," he says, and he also wanted the parents to be "loving people with no big problems." The families have all seen the film and are pleased with it. Balmès has kept in touch with them and is hoping to have them all meet someday, possibly in Namibia.

If there is any message to Babies, Balmès says, it is a very simple one. "I guess what you can read between the lines of the film is that, if children have their basic needs fulfilled and there is love, they'll all do well, wherever they grow up."

Babies plays Toronto's Hot Docs festival on April 30 and opens in theatres on May 7.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.