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Best Coming of age Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of coming of age cinema — measured across 9,085 indexed frames from 130 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Coming of age films over-index on teenager, boy and girl — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Stand By Me (1986)

    Rob ReinerDP Thomas Del RuthIMDb 8.1TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    It's the summer of 1959 in Castlerock, Oregon and four 12 year-old boys - Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern - are fast friends. After learning of the general location of the body of a local boy who has been missing for several days, they set off into the woods to see it. Along the way, they learn about themselves, the meaning of friendship and the need to stand up for what is right.

  2. 2

    It (2017)

    Andy MuschiettiDP Chung Chung-hoonIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    In the Town of Derry, the local kids are disappearing one by one. In a place known as 'The Barrens', a group of seven kids are united by their horrifying and strange encounters with an evil clown and their determination to kill It.

  3. 3

    Close (2022)

    Lukas DhontDP Frank van den EedenIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    The intense friendship between two thirteen-year old boys Leo and Remi suddenly gets disrupted. Struggling to understand what has happened, Léo approaches Sophie, Rémi's mother. "Close" is a film about friendship and responsibility.

  4. 4

    Moonlight (2016)

    Barry JenkinsDP James LaxtonIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Three time periods - young adolescence, mid-teen and young adult - in the life of black-American Chiron is presented. When a child, Chiron lives with his single, crack addict mother Paula in a crime ridden neighborhood in Miami. Chiron is a shy, withdrawn child largely due to his small size and being neglected by his mother, who is more concerned about getting her fixes and satisfying her carnal needs than taking care of him. Because of these issues, Chiron is bullied, the slurs hurled at him which he doesn't understand beyond knowing that they are meant to be hurtful. Besides his same aged Cuban-American friend Kevin, Chiron is given what little guidance he has in life from a neighborhood drug dealer named Juan, who can see that he is neglected, and Juan's caring girlfriend Teresa, whose home acts as a sanctuary away from the bullies and away from Paula's abuse. With this childhood as a foundation, Chiron may have a predetermined path in life, one that will only be magnified in terms of its problems when he reaches his difficult teen years when peer pressure affects what he and many of his peers do, unless he follows Juan's advice of truly making his own decisions for himself.

  5. 5

    Mid90s (2018)

    Jonah HillDP Christopher BlauveltIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    This movie follows a teenager named Stevie growing up in Los Angeles. He's struggling with his family, including his co-dependent single mom and his abusive older brother, and at school, where his richer friends seem to overlook him. When Stevie befriends a crew of skateboarders, he learns some tough lessons about class, race, and privilege.

  6. 6

    Kings Of Summer (2013)

    Jordan Vogt-RobertsDP Ross RiegeIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Joe Toy, on the verge of adolescence, finds himself increasingly frustrated by his single father, Frank's attempts to manage his life. Declaring his freedom once and for all, he escapes to a clearing in the woods with his best friend, Patrick, and a strange kid named Biaggio. He announces that they are going to build a house there, free from responsibility and parents. Once their makeshift abode is finished, the three young men find themselves masters of their own destiny, alone in the woods.

  7. 7

    Submarine

    Richard AyoadeDP Erik WilsonIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Precocious Oliver struggles with being popular in school but when a dark-haired beauty takes interest in him, he's determined to become the best boyfriend in the world. Meanwhile, his parents' already rocky relationship is threatened when his mother's ex-boyfriend moves in next door. Oliver makes some unorthodox plans to ensure that his parents stay together and that Jordana still likes him.

  8. 8

    Mysterious Skin (2004)

    Gregg ArakiDP Steve GainerIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    A gay teenage prostitute and another teen, both from the same small town in Kansas, narrate separate stories from their childhoods. The prostitute's story is about a disturbing homosexual encounter with his pedophile baseball coach, and the other teen's story revolves around an amnesia blackout during which he thinks he may have been abducted by aliens. Later, the second teen finds clues linking the gay prostitute (now living in New York City) to his possible alien abduction, so he tracks him down to finally seek out the truth.

  9. 9

    Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

    Wes AndersonDP Robert D. YeomanIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, Moonrise Kingdom tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is brewing off-shore – and the peaceful island community is turned upside down in more ways than anyone can handle.

  10. 10

    Paranoid Park (2007)

    Gus Van SantDP Christopher DoyleIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    The teenager and skateboarder Alex is interviewed by Detective Richard Lu that is investigating the death of a security guard in the rail yards severed by a train who was apparently hit by a skate board. While dealing with the separation process of his parents and the sexual heat of his virgin girlfriend Jennifer, Alex writes his last experiences in Paranoid Park with his new acquaintances and how the guard was killed, trying to relieve his feeling of guilty from his conscience.

What coming of age films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a coming of age frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — teenager is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • teenager6.4×
  • boy3.4×
  • girl2.5×
  • backpack2.4×
  • t-shirt2.2×
  • baseball cap2.0×
  • trees1.7×
  • tree1.7×

How coming of age films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate coming of age from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 86%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Boogie Nights is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 9,085 frames from 130 films carrying the coming of age label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/coming-of-age

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