Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysThe Giver Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
Jonas receives memories that expose the costs of a society organized around sameness. Examine how color, memory, and restricted language shape the film’s argument about choice.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 2014
- Genre
- Dystopian literary drama
- U.S. rating
- PG-13
- Runtime
- Approx. 97 minutes
- Director
- Phillip Noyce
- Screenplay
- Michael Mitnick & Robert B. Weide
- Based on
- Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel
- Music
- Marco Beltrami
- Featured cast
- Brenton Thwaites, Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Odeya Rush & Alexander Skarsgård
- Story setting
- A fictional future community
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- An infant is killed by injection in a disturbing sequence.
- Memories of war, injury, death, and intense emotional distress.
- Threats, pursuit, and a young child in danger.
Preview your edition, follow school viewing and permission policies, and provide an appropriate alternative assignment. Suggested grades 7–12 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 film credits · Content advisory (spoilers)