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Today’s children start making digital films at a very young age by the use of smartphones, compact cameras and other mobile media devices. For these youngest filmmakers, filming is a form of play. In general, once the film has been recorded, the child loses interest in it. We propose to call children’s digital video recordings “orphaned films,” not only because they are generally destined for oblivion, but also because they are not claimed by their very own makers. Instead of studying these digital “home movies” within the tradition of domestic media practices, we take them as a starting point for discussing children’s contribution to media archaeology as a practice, that is, as a concrete engagement with media’s materiality and temporality. By probing the borders between recording and recorded, for instance, children intuitively create connections between the past, the present and the future of the moving image. They are resisting the planned obsolescence of today’s technological devices by repurposing them, by turning them into playful tools and by using them to explore not only the world around them but also the limitations and potentialities of the media.