Coming-of-age movies that get adolescence exactly right

Four boys walk the train tracks to find a body and end up saying goodbye to childhood along the way — the coming-of-age film others get measured against.

One last day of school in 1976 Texas, hazing rituals and all — Linklater capturing a whole generation's aimless, hopeful drift.

An overachieving misfit falls for a teacher and wages war with a rival — Wes Anderson's funniest, sweetest portrait of teenage delusion.

Two Swedish teenage girls fall for each other in a town that has no idea what to do with them — tender and unexpectedly funny.

A neglected Parisian boy drifts toward petty crime and institutional failure — Truffaut's autobiographical debut, and still devastating.

Two teenage boys and an older woman take a road trip that turns out to be about class, mortality, and growing up fast.

A Maori girl fights to be recognized as her tribe's rightful leader despite tradition insisting only boys can inherit the role.

An Iranian girl's coming-of-age through revolution and exile, told in stark, expressive animation — funny and furious in equal measure.

A teenager's first serious relationship with an older art student consumes her entire sense of self — raw, long, unforgettable.

A Black teenager in the Paris projects finds identity and power through a friend group — vivid, alive, a rare kind of coming-of-age story.

Five Turkish sisters get locked away by their family as marriages get arranged — a coming-of-age story that becomes a quiet act of rebellion.

A Dublin teenager starts a band to impress a girl, and it becomes the thing that saves him — pure joy, wall-to-wall original songs.

A sharp-tongued, spiraling teenager navigates her best friend dating her brother — funny and mean in exactly the way actual teenagers are.

A single mother enlists two younger women to help raise her teenage son in 1979 Santa Barbara — warm, funny, generous to everyone in it.

A headstrong Sacramento teenager fights with her mother while dreaming of anywhere else — specific enough to feel like someone's real memory.

Kids living in the shadow of Disney World, in a budget motel, seen through their own sense of wonder — heartbreaking underneath the joy.

A painfully awkward teenager survives her last week of middle school — captures the anxiety of being online and young with real precision.

Three brothers growing up wild and unsupervised start to splinter apart as one of them realizes he's different — lyrical and aching.

A Korean-American family tries to build a farm and a future in rural Arkansas — tender, specific, and never sentimental about how hard it is.

The hearing daughter of a deaf family has to choose between her own dream and her role as their interpreter to the world — earns every tear.