coming of age

She gets a bit EMO and falls out with her friend, who is way nicer than she is.

Is it only during long summer months’ teenagers ever find maturity? The venerable institution of the coming-of-age drama would have it so, sending (usually) nervous boys off to become men. Hot Summer Nights promises something similar before…

A smart, socially awkward loner attempts to navigate between teenage years and adulthood. Hundreds of films deal with this topic, relying on the easy drama arising from the transition out of education and into everything to come. Carrie…

The view we have of ourselves is almost certainly not what other people see. Knowing this doesn’t stop everyone making snap judgements based on cultural and social signifiers. These signifiers are a message in themselves, sometimes a sign…

Great films are transportive - they cultivate a sense of time and place that feels lived-in and specific, and use elements of production design, costume and sound to tell a story separate from the plot. In Only Yesterday, the place is…

Lest we forget, Germany was until very recently a country literally split in two. Reunification has proven remarkably successful but it has not all been plain sailing. Andreas Dresen’s coming of age nightmare in Leipzig shortly after the…

Fabricating convincing people is an incredibly tricky task. Add in too much drama and they become obvious creations. Too little on the other hand and they are liable to disintegrate under the bright glare of the camera. Brazilian coming of…

Films about mopey, misanthropic teenagers attempting to flee the quotidian plod of their domestic lives are dime a dozen in contemporary cinema, but it's out of the frying pan and into the fire for Daffi (Nelly Tagar) and Zohar (Dana Ivgy),…

What do Mahler, football, a newly discovered father and a seriously ill mother have in common? The answer is Victor (Romain Paul), a teenager living in a caravan on the beach whose lost his way. The Last Hammer Blow (Le dernier coup de mart…

There is a moving, beautifully-filmed story about a handsome young German girl struggling for her life, and to come of age, through an unlikely bond with a young Jewish refugee during the death throes of the Third Reich. This isn't it.…