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.
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Jane Campion: A Girl's Own Story
Directed by Jane Campion • Drama • 1984 • 27 minutes
Beatlemania, the sixties and growing up. Some stories about girlhood: where family is strange, adulthood lonely, and innocence perverse.
"A beautifully photographed, sharply drawn drama...A lovely debut which will be compared to Jane Campion'...
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North Putnam
Directed by Joel Fendelman • Documentary • 2024 • 90 minutes
Crafted with empathy, a hyper-real reporting lens and skillfully lush cinematography, North Putnam depicts a year in the life of a rural Indiana school district and the community it serves. Multiple storylines intersect, culminating in...
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Silvio Rodriguez: My First Calling
Directed by Catherine Murphy • Documentary • With Silvio Rodriquez • 2022 • 25 minutes
My First Calling explores the little-known story of global music giant Silvio Rodriguez, who intimately recounts coming of age on the youth brigades of the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign, where at only 14-years ...
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Toomelah (Ivan Sen)
Directed by Ivan Sen • Drama • With Daniel Connors, Michael Connors, Christopher Edwards • 2011 • 101 minutes
In a remote Aboriginal community, 10 year old Daniel yearns to be a gangster, like the male role models in his life. Skipping school, getting into fights and running drugs for Linden, wh...
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Beneath Clouds (Ivan Sen)
Directed by Ivan Sen • Drama • With Dannielle Hall, Damian Pitt, Jenna Lee Connors • 2011 • 90 minutes
Lena is a fair-skinned teenage girl with a dark skinned mother in an isolated Australian town. She rejects the Indigenous family that surrounds her, and longs for the love of her Irish father. ...
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The Dish & the Spoon (Allison Bagnall, w/ Greta Gerwig)
Directed by Alison Bagnall • Drama • With Greta Gerwig, Olly Alexander • 2011 • 92 minutes
This quirky romantic comedy follows Rose (Greta Gerwig), whose life changes after discovering her husband’s affair. Devastated and reeling, she soon crosses paths with a marooned British teenager (Olly Ale...
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The Rink
Directed by Sarah Ema Friedland • Documentary • With Gralen Stephon Vereen, Mickey "Bonesaw" Taylor,the Garden State Roller Derby Girls • 2014 • 53 minutes
Branch Brook Park Roller Rink in Newark, New Jersey is one of the few remaining urban rinks of its kind. This concrete structure is nestled ...
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Deej
Directed by Robert Rooy • Documentary • With DJ Savarese • 2017 • 73 minutes
Abandoned by his birth parents and presumed incompetent, DJ Savarese (“Deej”) found not only a loving family but also a life in words, which he types on a text-to-voice synthesizer. As he makes his way through high scho...
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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...
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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...
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Sisterhood
Directed by Nora El Hourch • Drama • With Leah Aubert, Médina Diarra, Salma Takaline • 2024 • 101 minutes
Despite their different social backgrounds, Amina, Djeneba, and Zineb have been friends for as long as they can remember. When Zineb experiences harassment from her brother’s best friend, Am...
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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...
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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...
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Youth (Hard Times)
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2024 • 226 minutes
YOUTH (HARD TIMES) is the second installment in Chinese director Wang Bing’s monumental series chronicling the lives of migrant garment workers — some as young as 15 — in the Zhili district of Huzhou City. Wang immerses himself in the live...
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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...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...