Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysHoles Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
Stanley’s sentence at Camp Green Lake uncovers connections among injustice, family stories, and a hidden search. Trace the film’s timelines and evaluate who controls its explanations.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 2003
- Genre
- Mystery literary adventure
- U.S. rating
- PG
- Runtime
- Approx. 117 minutes
- Director
- Andrew Davis
- Screenplay
- Louis Sachar
- Based on
- Louis Sachar’s 1998 novel
- Music
- Joel McNeely
- Featured cast
- Shia LaBeouf, Khleo Thomas, Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight & Patricia Arquette
- Story setting
- Fictional Texas desert; intertwined earlier family histories
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- Racist violence and killing, sexual coercion, and a character’s suicide through a venomous bite.
- Abuse at a detention camp, gun threats, fights, animal harm, and danger from heat and dehydration.
- Some language, smoking, and children in intense distress.
Preview your edition, follow school viewing and permission policies, and provide an appropriate alternative assignment. Suggested grades 5–12 are Teach Arcade’s classroom recommendation, separate from the film’s U.S. rating.
Classroom Connections
Use scene evidence to explore the topics above. Pair historical portrayals with reliable sources, literary adaptations with their texts, and animated metaphors with appropriate factual context.
Film details, advisories & classroom context: AFI credits and runtime · Disney film information · Content advisory (spoilers)