The 15 best coming-of-age films

Few stories, cinematic or otherwise, have proved as enduring as coming of age. There are countless variations, of course: a first love or heartbreak, a reckoning with mortality, learning a truth about a parent or friend, discovering right and wrong. You get the idea.

Regardless of the particulars, the best coming-of-age stories endure because growing up is one of the few truly universal experiences—even if many of us go through it kicking and screaming.

15. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023, dir: Kelly Fremon Craig)

Hollywood waited more than 50 years to adapt Judy Blume’s beloved YA novel for the big screen, but the wait was worth it. If Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is a little too neatly packaged for its own good, it is also witty, warm, and funny. Kelly Fremon Craig wisely takes Margaret’s concerns seriously and, like Blume, treats kids with respect. Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates shine in supporting roles as Margaret’s mother and grandmother, respectively, but the movie is carried by Abby Ryder Fortson. She is appealing as the title character—Margaret, that is—coping with a new school, a new group of friends, familial tensions, and a growing awareness of her bodily changes.

14. Real Women Have Curves (2002, dir: Patricia Cardoso)

America Ferrera was never better than in her film debut. In Real Women Have Curves, she is Ana Garcia, an 18-year-old Mexican-American growing up in East Los Angeles, where she is caught between the financial needs of her family and a possible college scholarship to Columbia University. Ferrera delivers a heartfelt performance as a smart young woman who quietly but resolutely resists being defined by others, whether that is mass-media conventions of feminine beauty or the barbs from her self-loathing mother (Lupe Ontiveros). Patricia Cardoso directs with empathy for all the characters in Josefina López and George Lavoo’s delicately crafted screenplay.

13. My Life As a Dog (1985, dir: Lasse Hallström)

Sometimes coming of age is more about acceptance than empowerment. In My Life as a Dog, Anton Glanzelius is remarkable as Ingemar, a 12-year-old Swedish boy in the late 1950s. His rambunctiousness proves too much for his terminally ill single mother, and he is pawned off on relatives in a small village. Ingemar’s subsequent adventures are tempered by his gnawing belief that he has been a burden. While Ingemar’s world is beset by death and disappointment, director Lasse Hallström avoids melodrama. Ingemar tends to measure his own bad luck against worse fates—Laika, the Soviet space dog left to die in orbit, a man crushed while loosening a tent pole—with an almost clinical detachment. Hallström’s international breakthrough is sensitive, empathetic, and poignant. 

12. Rebel without a Cause (1955, dir: Nicholas Ray)

Jim Stark (James Dean) is being torn apart. His mom is on his case, his dad doesn’t have his back, and the popular kids at his new school are horrific bullies. Jim’s problems mount tenfold when he is involved in a dangerous game of car chicken that ends with a classmate’s death. In a tragic irony, Dean died in a car crash roughly a month before the picture’s release. He might not be a terribly convincing high schooler (Dean died at age 24), but his angst rings with authenticity. Co-stars Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo really were teens, and both give heartbreaking performances. Alienated and from dysfunctional homes, the three create their own fantasy family, however briefly. If Nicholas Ray didn’t quite blow the lid off why kids from good homes turn to delinquency, the picture was still provocative enough for Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver to accuse it of corrupting America’s youth—an admonishment he made before seeing it. 
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11. Fish Tank (2009, dir: Andrea Arnold)

Fish Tank is imbued with raw honesty, much like the volatile girl at its center. Mia (Katie Jarvis) is a foul-mouthed, rage-filled 15-year-old stuck in a London housing project with her unhappy single mom (Kierston Wareing) and precocious younger sister (Rebecca Griffiths). When mom hooks up with a good-looking charmer (Michael Fassbender) who encourages Mia’s growing interest in dance, Mia finds herself inexorably drawn to the man. For Mia, dancing is not a path to stardom but an assertion of identity in a world that wants to dismiss her as trash. The movie doesn’t excuse the girl’s worst impulses, but it understands where they come from—and is subsequently compassionate. Jarvis is extraordinary. She had no acting experience when Arnold’s casting assistant spotted the girl fighting with her boyfriend in a railway station. Andrea Arnold’s brand of social realism fits a British tradition from Tony Richardson to Ken Loach, but Fish Tank has a fierceness all its own.

10. The 400 Blows (1959, dir: François Truffau

François Truffaut’s directorial debut was a milestone of the nouvelle vague (or French New Wave), but The 400 Blows remains a terrifically entertaining coming-of-age story. Jean-Pierre Léaud, in his first of several Truffaut films, plays Antoine Doinel, a teenager trapped in an unpleasant home life and an oppressive school system. Based partly on Truffaut’s own difficult childhood, The 400 Blows is unsentimental but affectionate toward its young protagonist. Partial to bouncing around the streets of Paris, Antoine sees his mother in the arms of a man not his father. He steals a typewriter that leads to serious trouble. Every poor decision Antoine makes seems less an act of rebellion than the understandable response of a kid whom adults have stopped trying to understand. The movie’s title, a source of smirking for many an arrested adolescent, references the French expression faire les quatre cents coups, loosely meaning “to raise hell.” The famous freeze-frame ending suspends Antoine between childhood and adulthood. Where he goes from here is up to the viewer.

9. Moonrise Kingdom (2012, dir: Wes Anderson) 

Moonrise Kingdom understands that the crux of adolescent obsession lies in its exuberance, earnestness, and flat-out weirdness. Our chaste lovers are Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward), 12-year-olds who meet in the summer of 1965 on a fictitious New England island. Sam, outfitted in crooked eyeglasses and coonskin cap, is an orphan who has trouble making friends. Suzy, burdened with unhappily quarrelsome parents, has trouble curbing her temper. The ensemble cast features wonderful turns from several of writer-director Wes Anderson’s regulars––including Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, and Bill Murray––but Moonrise Kingdom never strays far from Suzy and Sam. They flee their respective adult supervision and rendezvous for an adventure before summer’s end. She brings a suitcase filled with girls’ adventure books and a battery-operated record player. He takes camping gear and a corncob pipe. Together they dance on a secluded beach and read dime-store novels. That’s paradise as filtered through the prism of Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola.

8. Y tu mamá también (2001, dir: Alfonso Cuarón) 

Set in Mexico circa 1999, Y tu mamá también follows Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael García Bernal), two teenage friends from different social classes whose girlfriends are in Italy for the summer. Preternaturally horny, the boys have the ostensibly good fortune of embarking on an impromptu road trip with Luisa (Maribel Verdú), a Spanish wife who has run out on her philandering husband. Tenoch and Julio assume they will get laid, but Luisa’s presence becomes the catalyst for some unexpected turns. An omniscient narrator periodically interrupts the boys’ story to point out the world at their periphery—a roadside funeral, a shuttered factory. Mexico’s socioeconomic inequality registers as background noise for these two kids absorbed by their bravado and hormones. Against a backdrop of political unrest in Mexico, Cuarón––who wrote the screenplay with his brother Carlos––weaves a story about awakening to class, sexuality, and the vicissitudes of life.
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7. Kes (1969, dir: Ken Loach)

Billy Casper’s future looks bleak. He lives in the Yorkshire region of Northern England where it is assumed the boys will become coal miners like nearly all their fathers. The 15-year-old has no father in his life, and his days are a steady grind of reprimands at school and bullying from his older brother at home. Amid the hardscrabble routine, the stoic boy finds his escape with a kestrel that he dotes on and resolves to train. The bond gives Billy a sense of purpose and competence, revealing abilities that the adults around him either overlook or deem of no value. Adapted from the Barry Hines novel A Kestrel for a Knave, Kes is beautifully realized social realism from director Ken Loach. In searching for a suitable Billy, the filmmaker stumbled upon a local kid, David Bradley. Distinguished by his mournful eyes and angular face, Bradley’s revelatory performance captures the joys, the stings, and––perhaps most important––the resilience of growing up. 

6. Boyz n the Hood (1991, dir. John Singleton)

For his feature debut, John Singleton drew upon his own childhood experiences in South Central Los Angeles. The memories were still fresh for the filmmaker, only 22 at the time and newly graduated from the University of Southern California film school. Boyz n the Hood follows a tight-knit group of black friends navigating life, but Singleton’s clear surrogate is Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a talented teenager sent by his single mom to live with his dad (Laurence Fishburne) in Crenshaw. The story packs in a lot about friendship, fatherhood, race, and poverty, but its themes are always in service to the movie’s vividly drawn characters. Gooding and Fishburne give standout performances, but Ice Cube and Morris Chestnut also do solid work. Boyz n the Hood made Singleton the youngest director ever nominated for a Best Director Oscar and the first African American to be up for the award. Tragically, Singleton’s canon is limited: he died in 2019 at age 51 after suffering a stroke.
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5. Pather Panchali (1955, dir: Satyajit Ray)

Pather Panchali occupies a central place in world cinema, marking Satyajit Ray’s directorial debut and a major breakthrough for Indian film among Western art-house audiences. It is also a masterpiece about a destitute Brahmin family in rural Bengal in the 1910s. Our focal point is Apu (Subir Banerjee), the family’s mischievous young son, but Ray also takes great care in shaping Apu’s parents (Karuna Banerjee and Kanu Banerjee), older sister Durga (Uma Dasgupta), and Indir (Chunibala Devi), the withered auntie who benefits from Durga’s sticky fingers when it comes to the orchard next door. Influenced by Italian neorealism, Pather Panchali has a relaxed pace and tone that allow us to fix on small moments of beauty and grace. Apu raids his sister’s toy box to make a costume. He and Durga are ecstatic when they finally see a locomotive with their own eyes. They play in the downpour of a monsoon. Such images linger in memory long after the final reel. Ray continued to chronicle Apu’s life with Aparajito the following year and The World of Apu in 1959.

4. Breaking Away (1979, dir: Peter Yates)

Cycling provides the energy of Breaking Away, but this comedy-drama also runs on unseen magic. There’s no other explanation for how it can check so many coming-of-age tropes and still feel so buoyantly unconventional. Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, and Jackie Earle Haley play teenage friends in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the summer after their high school graduation, and the four hang out together, talk about girls, and swim in an abandoned quarry. None plan to attend college, much less Indiana University in their hometown. The sons of rock-cutting quarry workers, they expect to follow the paths of their parents––even though most of the quarry jobs vanished long ago. The lone exception might be Dave (Christopher), whose interest in cycling has morphed into an obsession with remaking himself as Italian. Paul Dooley and Barbara Barrie steal most of their scenes as his befuddled folks. Dad is irritated enough that his son is shaving his legs as the “I-talian” cyclists presumably do, but things go too far when Dave renames the family cat “Fellini.” Unassuming and utterly charming, Breaking Away is all heart without tugging on heartstrings. That must be magic.

3. Boyhood (2014, dir: Richard Linklater)

Boyhood is a testament to the bold ambition of Richard Linklater. To chronicle a boy’s life, the filmmaker and his committed cast filmed in Linklater’s native Texas for about a week every summer over a 12-year period. Other movies have captured the phenomenon of growing up, but Boyhood offers the exhilaration of watching the journey unfold in one fell swoop. The movie captures the literal transformation of Mason Evans Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) from doughy 6-year-old to lanky college freshman. Sometimes the physical changes are jarring. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought the actor playing Mason had been replaced between seventh and eighth grade. Within minutes, the boy is taller and slimmer, his voice having deepened. When it comes to special effects, Hollywood has nothing on puberty. Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette are terrific as Mason’s parents (and Arquette won an Oscar for her performance), but Linklater was especially fortunate when he gambled on casting Coltrane, who is excellent. There is no other film quite like Boyhood, and there likely won’t be for a long time. 

2. The Graduate (1967, dir: Mike Nichols)

Mike Nichols’ watershed comedy-drama is proof that a meaningful coming of age isn’t limited to teenagers and small children. Dustin Hoffman became an overnight sensation as Benjamin Braddock, fresh out of college but pissed at the world and adrift—literally and metaphorically—in the swimming pool of his parents’ comfortable Los Angeles home. Cue Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the coolly contemptuous wife of his father’s business partner. “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me,” Benjamin intones in one of the picture’s more famous lines. “…Aren’t you?” Almost immediately, The Graduate became a seminal document for a generation of disaffected youth determined not to become their parents. There are many reasons to adore the movie, from Buck Henry’s witty script to the lovely Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack to the film’s ambiguous (and perfect) final moments. The leads are extraordinary. Nichols cast the then-unknown Hoffman because he fit the director’s vision of Benjamin as more nervous and insecure than the WASPy athlete described in the novella on which the film is based. Robert Redford, who had worked with Nichols in Barefoot in the Park on Broadway, lobbied hard for the role. He lost out after Nichols asked the ridiculously handsome actor how he handled being rejected by a woman. Redford didn’t even understand the concept.
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1. The Last Picture Show (1971, dir: Peter Bogdanovich)

The Last Picture Show was something of a coming of age for Peter Bogdanovich, who paid tribute to his heroes like John Ford and Howard Hawks while bringing their classical storytelling into the freer milieu of New Hollywood. Set in early-1950s Texas and shot in gorgeous black and white by Robert Surtees, the film went far beyond mere imitation of the old masters. Bogdanovich’s sprawling adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s 1966 novel drills deep into the complexities of small-town life. The movie’s entry point is high school senior Sonny Crawford, played by Timothy Bottoms with detached dolefulness, who slips into an affair with the football coach’s sad and lonely wife (Cloris Leachman). While primarily Sonny’s story, The Last Picture Show also chronicles the coming of age for several teenage residents of Anarene, Texas. Sonny’s best friend, Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges), finds himself twisted in knots over Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd), his beautiful, manipulative, and social-climbing girlfriend. Model-turned-actress Shepherd, 21 at the time of production, makes an indelible impression both on and off the screen; she and Bogdanovich began an affair during the shoot (while his then-wife Polly Platt served as production designer). As strong as the young actors are, they’re overshadowed by Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnson, and Leachman; the latter two earned Oscars for their supporting roles. Bogdanovich’s humane, elegiac film vividly presents a dust-choked dot on a map where its teens have little to do but drink, screw, and inherit the disappointed lives of their parents.    

Honorable mention: American Graffiti (1973, dir. George Lucas), Au revoir, les enfants (1987, dir. Louis Malle), A Brighter Summer Day (1991, dir.Edward Yang), Cooley High (1975, dir. Michael Schultz), Eve’s Bayou (1997, dir. Kasi Lemmons), Ghost World (2001, dir. Terry Zwigoff),  Girlhood (2014, dir. Céline Sciamma)), Lady Bird (2017, dir. Greta Gerwig), La Promesse (1996, dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne), The Member of the Wedding (1952, dir. Fred Zinnemann), Mustang (2015, dir. Deniz Gamze Ergüven), Nobody Knows (2004, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda), Persepolis (2007, dir. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud), Spirit of the Beehive (1973, dir.Victor Erice), Stand by Me (1986, dir. Rob Reiner)