Coming of Age

A soon-to-be-demolished social housing estate, named after Yuri Gagarin, in the Parisian banlieue provides the earthly anchor for weightless flights of fancy in this wondrous and moving debut feature.

Iconic Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino delivers a majestical memoir with this beautifully shot, ribald bout of nostalgia for growing up amongst the anarchy of 1980s Naples.

A young French-Algerian woman, Selma, navigates emerging sexual desires under the constraints of her family’s patriarchal notions of virginity, intimacy and womanhood in this empowering coming-of-age drama.

One of the breakout discoveries of Sundance and Cannes festivals this year was Pascual Sisto’s troubling allegorical take on teenage alienation as the titular John decides to trap his family in a deep hole.

Offering an intimate window into the migrant experience, director Samuel Kishi Leopo has shaped a tender and honest drama about displacement, family and hope, recalling aspects of his own childhood in an immigrant community.

Railing against an oppressive, overbearing father, a teenage girl embraces independence and flirts with desire over the course of a formative weekend in this sunny, sinister Croatian drama.

Based on the 2014 memoir, My Salinger Year is The Devil Wears Prada for the literary world, a young woman’s coming of age as she balances her writing ambitions with her new job at a major New York City literary agency.

A young cartoonist is forced to grow up faster than she’d like when an unplanned pregnancy threatens to upset her party-heavy lifestyle in this subversive Norwegian comedy.

Schoolyard romance, musical numbers and lifelike robotics collide in this animated glimpse at what teenage life might look like in a world increasingly run by artificial intelligence.

Writer/director Ayten Amin’s captivating second feature explores the entangled contradictions of living up to the expectations of God and family while balancing the desire for an Insta-worthy life in modern Egypt.

This queer coming-of-age romance combines all the sensuality of François Ozon’s best with the infectious energy of a CW drama and how meeting one person can open you up and change the trajectory of your life.

Tehran’s byways teem with life in this Iranian crime-caper that blends gritty, Buñuelesque social realism, strong character drama, and spirited storybook style adventure.

Based on a true story, Tigers is a riveting look at the price of success in the cut-throat world of professional football.

Offering an intimate look into organised crime in the Calabria region of Italy, To Chiara forgoes the shock-value of violence and drug addiction to consider the heartbreaking impact on family and culture.

The withering grip of the patriarchy pervades Kira Kovalenko's Cannes Un Certain Regard-winning tale of a young woman coming of age within a suffocating family in Russia’s desolate North Caucasus.

Borgen and Duke of Burgundy star Sidse Babett Knudsen is the imperious matriarch of a criminal empire in this fleet, brutal crime drama about bad luck and bad families from debut director Jeanette Nordahl.