Recent coming-of-age movies: a 1980 Sicilian double murder inspired a love story

A coming-of-age film follows a young person through the stretch of life where childhood ends and adulthood has not yet been settled. The genre favours conversation and inner life over action, and it usually centres on teenagers. Its roots are in the Bildungsroman, a German novel form whose name joins the words for education and novel. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795 to 1796) is the standard example, though Wieland's Agathon (1767) is sometimes named earlier.

The recent versions look different. Critics now also describe a delayed coming-of-age film, where adulthood is postponed and people are still working out relationships, housing and work into their late 20s and early 30s. Vikram Murthi, writing in The Nation, ties that shift to a stagnant economy, technology that preaches connection but rewards isolation, and a spiritual emergency spurred partly by climate change.

This guide picks 7 films on Relay that the catalog dates 2018 to 2025, made in Scotland, Spain, Italy, South Korea, Turkey and India. Years in the headings are Relay's. Some premiered earlier: Microhabitat and More in 2017, Beats in 2019, L'Immensita in 2022 and Sunday Special in 2024. The one that gives the post its title is Fireworks, a Sicilian love story inspired by a real double killing in 1980. That case is often considered the catalyst for Italy's main LGBTQ+ rights organisation.

What makes a coming-of-age movie

• A young protagonist at a threshold. A first love, a first job, a first act of defiance.
• A world with rules to push against. A law, a family, a rent, a religious holiday.
• A change that is inner as well as outer. The plot matters less than who the character is by the end.
• A place the camera knows well. Most of these films are specific to one town, one year, one community.

7 recent coming-of-age movies to watch

Carmen & Lola (2018)

Carmen lives in a Romani community on the edge of Madrid and expects to marry and have children, as the women around her have. Then she meets Lola, a Romani girl who wants to go to university. Their relationship leads their families to reject them.

Arantxa Echevarría, a Spanish director, made it as her first feature, and the cast was almost entirely first-time actors from Romani communities. She says production companies and television networks turned her script down until the telecom company Orange, whose chief executive had followed her earlier shorts and documentaries, agreed to finance it. It premiered at Cannes in the Directors' Fortnight section and won two Goya Awards, Spain's national film prizes: Best New Director and Best Supporting Actress.

Drama

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Fireworks (2023)

In October 1980, two people disappeared from their homes in Giarre, Sicily: Giorgio Giammona, 25, and Antonio Galatola, 15. Their bodies were found two weeks later, each shot in the head. Police named a 13-year-old nephew, who confessed and then took it back. No culprit was ever formally identified.

The killings are often considered the catalyst for Arcigay, which was founded in Palermo about a month later and is Italy's main LGBTQ+ rights organisation. Giuseppe Fiorello, a Sicilian actor, directed this film as his first feature and moved the story to 1982, renaming the two boys Gianni and Nino. He won the Nastro d'Argento for Best New Director. The Italian title, Stranizza d'amuri, borrows the name of a Franco Battiato song.

Drama

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Beats (2020)

Two best friends in Scotland in 1994 try to get to one last rave. That year the UK passed the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which gave police powers against raves and defined rave music in law as sounds made up of a succession of repetitive beats. The film is adapted from a one-man stage play by the playwright Kieran Hurley, who wrote the screenplay with the director Brian Welsh.

Welsh shot it mostly in black and white so it would feel like a memory, with flashes of colour to show how strong the drug hit. The climactic rave was filmed as a real event in a Glasgow warehouse. Steven Soderbergh, the American film director, is an executive producer, after seeing Welsh's work on Black Mirror. It premiered at Rotterdam in January 2019 and reached US audiences on 26 June 2020.

Drama

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Microhabitat (2018)

Mi-so, played by Esom, is a housekeeper in her thirties. When her rent rises she gives up her flat rather than her whiskey and cigarettes, and sleeps on the sofas of her former bandmates. Her boyfriend Han-sol struggles to earn a living from his webtoon, a digital comic, and wants a steadier life away from Seoul.

Jeon Go-woon wrote and directed it as her first feature. She has said the characters live by a model of compromise: to have their own place in Seoul, everyone had to give something up. It premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in October 2017 and won the CGV Arthouse Award. It went on to win Best New Director at the Buil, Blue Dragon and Korean film critics awards.

Comedy

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L'Immensita (2023)

Rome in the early 1970s. Clara, a Spanish mother played by Penélope Cruz, is in a marriage that is all but over. Her 12-year-old child Adri was christened Adriana but prefers to live as Andrew, and the two of them escape the tension at home through games and imagination.

The Italian director Emanuele Crialese told reporters at the Venice Film Festival that he was born a woman, as he presented the film as highly autobiographical. It competed for the top prize there. Critics were divided: Sight and Sound called it heartfelt but overly insistent, while Screen Daily praised Cruz's performance as its main draw.

Drama

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More (2018)

Gaza is 14 years old and lives with his father, who runs a people-smuggling business on the Turkish coast. The film is adapted from the award-winning novel Daha by Hakan Günday and follows a quiet teenager whose life is corrupted by the family trade. One reviewer called it a harrowing portrayal of Europe's refugee crisis. It stretches the genre: Cineuropa describes it as the story of a boy growing up in a world with no room for innocence.

Onur Saylak, a top Turkish actor, made his directorial debut with it. It premiered on 3 July 2017 at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and opened in Turkey on 12 January 2018. It won the top prize at London's East End Film Festival, which goes to the strongest film from a first or second time director, and three awards at the Adana Film Festival.

Thriller

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Sunday Special (2025)

Sneha is 11. On a Sunday that falls on Gandhi Jayanti, a day when meat sales are banned, she sets out to find a forbidden chicken curry. The ban is real: civic authorities in Bengaluru order slaughter and meat sales stopped every year on 2 October, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. It is the lightest entry here, a child's errand story that the Deccan Herald's reviewer called a coming-of-age tale.

Abhilash Shetty wrote, directed and produced the film in Kannada, the language of Karnataka. He is a self-taught filmmaker who left a corporate job, and his first feature was Koli Taal in 2021. Sunday Special premiered at the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival on 4 December 2024, opened in Karnataka cinemas on 9 May 2025 and screened at the New York Indian Film Festival on 22 June 2025.

Comedy

Where to go next

• For more films made far from Hollywood, see Arthouse movies.
• For another story told through music and nights out, see Music documentaries.