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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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...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Ray & Liz (Richard Billingham)
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...
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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...
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Scheme Birds
Directed by Ellen Fiske, Ellinor Hallin • Documentary • 2019 • 86 minutes
The story of Gemma, a teenage troublemaker, growing up in a world of pigeons and violence. From childhood to motherhood, her life unfolds as innocent games turn towards serious crime. Directors Ellen Fiske and Ellinor Hall...
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Sexy Baby
Directed by Jill Bauer, Ronna Gradus • Documentary • 2012 • 83 minutes
These days, sex doesn't just sell, it saturates our culture. In the age of runaway social media and "sexting," raunchy rap songs on pop radio and hardcore pornography at the click of a mouse—what's it like to be a woman? A gi...
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Lore
Directed by Cate Shortland • Drama • With Saskia Rosendahl • 2013 • 108 minutes
Left to fend for themselves after their SS officer father and mother, staunch Nazi believers, are interred by the victorious Allies at the end of World War II, five German children undertake a harrowing journey that ...
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We Go Way Back
Directed by Lynn Shelton • Drama • With Amber Hubert, Maggie Brown, Kate Bayley • 2006 • 79 minutes
Lynn Shelton's debut feature draws on her past as a stage actress but WE GO WAY BACK is no autobiographical drama. Kate (Amber Hubert) is a struggling actress who has given up her happiness and he...
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The Inheritors
Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky • Documentary • 2009 • 90 minutes
The most highly praised and awarded Mexican documentary in many years, THE INHERITORS by Eugenio Polgovsky immerses us in the daily lives of children who, with their families, survive only by their unrelenting labor.
The film takes...
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Les Enfants Terribles
Directed by Ahmet Necdet Çupur • Documentary • 2021 • 93 minutes
Twenty years ago, Ahmet Necdet Çupur left his village in south-eastern Turkey, against his parents wishes. Now, he is back. But this time as a filmmaker documenting his siblings’ struggles against the same oppressive family culture...
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We Need to Talk About Kevin
Directed by Lynne Ramsay • Drama • With Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller • 2010 • 112 minutes
A suspenseful and gripping psychological thriller, Lynne Ramsay’s WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN explores the fractious relationship between a mother and her evil son. Tilda Swinton, in a bracing...
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Best Kept Secret
Directed by Samantha Buck • Documentary • With Janet Mino, Alyce Barnhardt, Robert Caspar, Johnson Green, Carla Byrd, Matthew McNabb • 2012 • 85 minutes
Janet Mino has taught her class of students with autism for four years. When they graduate in spring 2012, they will leave the security of the ...
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We Are the Lambeth Boys (Karel Reisz)
Directed by Karel Reisz • Documentary • With John Rollason, Thomas Ahearne, Patrick Ahearne • 1959 • 53 minutes
Karel Reisz’s honest and sympathetic depiction of South London teens aimed to challenge the media perception of ‘Teddy Boys’, and would be one of the last films to appear under the Fre...
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Resistance is Life
Directed by Apo W. Bazidi • Documentary • 2017 • 73 minutes
From a refugee camp on the Turkish-Syrian border, an 8-year-old girl named Evlin characterizes the resilience of her hometown of Kobane against ISIS militants. In the midst of the tragic war in Syria, Evlin's story provides hope.
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Bluebeard (Kékszakállú)
Directed by Gastón Solnicki • Drama • With Laila Maltz, Lara Tarlowski,
Katia Szechtman • 2016 • 72 minutesHailed as "an eerie high-modernist fable... mightily minimalist, and drop-dead gorgeous" (Film Comment), Kékszakállú is a beguiling portrait of several young women at the threshold of adu...
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Adama
Directed by Simon Rouby • Animation • 2020 • 82 minutes
ADAMA is a modern and universal story, the coming-of-age tale of a young African boy searching for his brother, just as a new world is about to emerge from the chaos of war.
12-year-old Adama lives in a remote West African village. Beyond ...
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Miss Kiet's Children
Directed by Petra Lataster-Czisch & Peter Lataster • Documentary • 2016 • 113 minutes
Kiet Engels is the kind of teacher one wishes every schoolchild could have. She is strict but never harsh. She is loving but never soft. Her patience in endless.
Many of Miss Kiet's pupils are refugees who hav...
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On the Way to School
Directed by Pascal Plisson • Documentary • 2013 • 77 minutes
They live in all four corners of the planet and share a thirst for knowledge. Almost instinctively, they know that their wellbeing (indeed, their survival) depend on knowledge and education. From the dangerous savannahs of Kenya to the...