Friends Connor Turner (3) and Leonie Kennedy (4) attend the Wattie's Cans Film Festival at Rialto Cinemas in Dunedin yesterday.
Connor's mother, Monique Turner, said she was chaperoning the pair, who attend St Clair Kindergarten, on their ''first date'' to the computer-animated family comedy film Minions.
Neither child had been to a movie theatre to see a film before.
For the festival, movie fans swap a a can of Wattie's food for a ticket.
The company matches every donation, with all cans going to the Salvation Army.
Salvation Army Dunedin corps officer Rochelle Moffat said the annual event was a significant event in stocking the foodbank to ''feed back to the community''.
The festival was a ''win-win'' because it helped stock the foodbank and gave families the chance to visit the cinema at a discounted price.
Other cinemas taking part in the festival in the South included Reading Cinemas in Dunedin, Queenstown and Invercargill, Cinema Paradiso in Wanaka, Central Cinema in Alexandra and Screen 1 in Gore.
