GET 25% OFF YOUR FIRST YEAR!

Limited time - use promo code: FALL25 at checkout

Growing Up

Growing Up

A bittersweet collection of documentaries and a few fiction films on a wide range of childhoods and childhood experiences around the world, from the adventures and idylls of growing up, to coping with personal challenges, and facing terrible tragedies.

Subscribe Share
Growing Up
  • Inbetween Girl

    Directed by Mei Makino • Drama • With Emma Galbraith, William Magnuson • 2021 • 90 minutes

    Teen artist Angie Chen does NOT like Liam--she just likes getting rides home from him after soccer practice. Okay, so he has great eyebrows, but he's with Sheryl, the Instagram princess of their Episcopali...

  • Winnie Wright, Age 11

    Directed by Suzanne Davenport • Documentary • 1974 • 26 minutes

    Winnie, the daughter of a steel worker and a teacher lives in Gage Park, a Chicago neighborhood that is changing from white to black. Her family struggles with racism, inflation and a threatened strike, as Winnie learns what it mean...

  • Roads of Lava

    Directed by Gretel Marin • Documentary • 2024 • 28 minutes

    Afibola—a Black, queer, feminist activist and poet—lives with her eight-year-old son Olorun in downtown Havana, Cuba. Moving between the safety of their modest home and the uncertainty of the streets outside, Afibolo reflects on the comp...

  • Youth (Spring)

    Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2023 • 215 minutes

    The town of Zhili, about 95 miles from Shanghai, is a center for the children’s garment industry. Workers in their teens and early twenties come from surrounding provinces to live in sparse, trash-strewn concrete dorms in the same building...

  • The Dilemma of Desire

    Directed by Maria Finitzo • Documentary • 2020 • 118 minutes

    THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE is a provocative new film helping to normalize dialogue about female sexuality. The film follows diverse, intergenerational stories of women who are shattering lies about female sexual desire, bodies and power. Ar...

  • Now We Live on Clifton

    Directed by Jerry Blumenthal, Alphonse Blumenthal, Susan Delson, Sharon Karp, Peter Kuttner, Gordon Quinn, Richa • Documentary • 1974 • 26 minutes

    Now We Live on Clifton follows 10 year old Pam Taylor and her 12 year old brother Scott around their multiracial West Lincoln Park neighborhood. The ...

  • Polish Prayers

    Directed by Hanka Nobis • Documentary • 2022 • 82 minutes

    It is the women, the tender, difficult, exciting relationships with them, through which Antek learns to really be a man. The film follows him from when he has all the answers to the many questions any young man needs to answer for himself...

  • Spare Keys

    Directed by Jeanne Aslan and Paul Saintillan • Drama • With Céleste Brunnquell, Quentin Dolmaire • 2023 • 108 minutes

    In Nancy, situated in eastern France, 15-year-old Sophie (Céleste Brunnquell) yearns to break free from her dysfunctional family. After one argument too many, she seizes an oppor...

  • Marguerite's Theorem

    Directed by Anna Novion • Drama • With Ella Rumpf, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Clotilde Courau • 2023 • 115 minutes

    The trajectory of Marguerite’s future, a brilliant mathematics PhD at France's prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure, seems perfectly planned out. As the only woman in her class in the ...

  • Stop-Zemlia

    Directed by Kateryna Gornostai • Drama • 2021 • 122 minutes

    Hanging out with friends, smoking too much, spinning bottles and kissing, making mistakes, playing, refusing to accept, dreaming with open eyes – life as a teenager can be overwhelmingly beautiful and difficult at the same time. Introve...

  • Astrakan

    Directed by David Depesseville • Drama • 2022 • 105 minutes

    When Samuel, a young orphan, is sent to live with foster parents Marie and Clement, he is gradually forced to face the demons he's holding on to internally, as well as those that exist within his new family. Swept up in the motions of c...

  • Maidentrip

    Directed by Jillian Schlesinger • Documentary • 2013 • 82 minutes

    14-year-old Laura Dekker sets out - camera in hand - on a two-year voyage in pursuit of her dream to be the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone. In the wake of a year-long battle with Dutch authorities that sparked...

  • Summer White

    Directed by Rodrigo Ruiz Patterson • Drama • With Adrián Ross, Sophie Alexander-Katz • 2020 • 85 minutes

    13-year-old Rodrigo is a solitary teenager who finds solace in his intimate relationship with his mother, Valeria. She is his best friend, his protector, and his entire world. When her new bo...

  • The Butterfly

    Directed by Philippe Muyl • Drama • With Michel Serrault • 2002 • 80 minutes

    Legendary actor Michel Serrault stars as Julien, an ornery butterfly collector. When eight-year-old Elsa and her often-absent mother move into the apartment next to his, the persistent and curious Elsa adopts a reluctan...

  • Almost Friends

    Directed by Nitzan Ophir • Documentary • 2014 • 58 minutes

    Two girls meet in the “cloud”. 

    Samar, 12, lives in Lod, a mixed city marred by poverty and crime. She has an Arab Israeli mother and a Palestinian father from the Occupied Territories.

    Linor, 11, lives in Tlamim, a religious Jewish se...

  • One Step From Glory

    Directed by Fabrice Macaux • Documentary • 2020 • 53 minutes

    Le Havre Athletic Club (HAC) training center is one of the best and most demanding in Europe, the oldest club in French football.

    Abdel, 18, is entering a decisive year; the last in the center for this young footballer. The challenge ...

  • As If It Were Yesterday

    Directed by Myriam Abramovicz and Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • 1980 • 84 minutes

    Belgium, 1940. Amidst escalating terror and raids on Jewish residents by the occupying Nazi forces, a resistance movement emerges to shelter Jewish children from deportation and extermination. Myriam Abramowicz...

  • Pony Boys

    Directed by Eric Stange • Documentary • 2022 • 22 minutes

    Summer, 1967. Two Massachusetts boys – 9 and 11 — are desperate to visit Expo ’67 in Montreal — the largest World’s Fair ever. But their parents can’t take them. Then Mom comes up with the solution: hitch their pet Shetland pony King to a...

  • Kisses

    Directed by Lance Daly • Drama • With Shane Curry, Kelly O'Neill • 2010 • 78 minutes

    On the fringes of Dublin two kids, Kylie and Dylan, live in a suburban housing estate devoid of life, colour and the prospect of escape. Kylie lives with five other siblings and her overworked mother. Next door,...

  • Attila Marcel

    Directed by Sylvain Chomet • Drama • With Guillaume Gouix, Anne Le Ny • 2013 • 104 minutes

    Paul, thirty or so, lives in a Paris apartment with his aunts, two old aristocrats who have raised him since he was two and who dream of seeing him become a virtuoso pianist. His life is made up of the sam...

  • Summer 1993

    Directed by Carla Simón • Drama • With Laia Artigas, Paula Robles • 2017 • 96 minutes

    In Carla Simon’s touching autobiographical film, six-year-old Frida looks on in silence as the last objects from her recently deceased mother’s apartment in Barcelona are placed in boxes. Although her aunt, unc...

  • Crystal Swan

    Directed by Darya Zhuk • Drama • With Alina Nasibullina, Ivan Mulin • 2018 • 93 minutes

    Set a few years after Belarus gained independence in 1990, this vibrant debut feature follows the path of young Evelina, who dreams of moving to Chicago in order to pursue her passion for house music. However...

  • Ray & Liz

    Directed by Richard Billingham • Drama • With Patrick Romer, Richard Ashton, Justin Salinger • 2018 • 107 minutes

    On the outskirts of Birmingham and the margins of society, the Billingham family perform extreme rituals and break social taboos as they muddle through a life decided by factors beyo...

  • Casa Grande

    Directed by Fellipe Barbosa • Drama • With Marcello Novaes, Suzana Pires, Thales Cavalcanti • 2014 • 115 minutes

    Jean Cavalcanti attends a well reguarded private boys' school. He lives a carefree life of moderate privilege in a gated, custom built house in an affluent neighborhood in suburban Ri...