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Coming of Age Stories (31)

  • A One/Two/Many/World
    A One/Two/Many/World
    Richard Swinden 1970 15 min
    A film of mixed cinematic metaphors made with students from Queen’s University and local neighborhood children - a portrait of a young boy’s journey of self-discovery in a bewildering world of contradictions and imposed conditions. Many of the sequences are surrealistic in effect, creating a social commentary expressed in symbolic language.
  • Altötting
    Altötting
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    Andreas Hykade 2020 11 min
    “You know, when I was a boy, I fell in love with the Virgin Mary. It happened in a little Bavarian town called Altötting.” Mesmerizing, haunting, and deeply personal, Altötting is a coming-of-age story about love, faith, mortality, and shattered illusions.
  • Becoming 13
    Becoming 13
    Victoria King 2006 47 min
    This smart documentary explores the intimidating terrain of girlhood by following three 12-year-olds over the period of one year. As these girls move from childhood to maturity, it's clear that peer pressure is an important influence, but as the films shows, the greatest influence in a young girl's life is family.

    Filmmaker Victoria King's creative approach, including the use of "diary-cam" footage, not only follows the girls but allows them to question the world in their own voices. Ultimately, the film reveals the complexities of being 12, both satisfying our curiosity and inviting us to ask, What happens next?
  • Big Mouth
    Big Mouth
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    Andrea Dorfman 2012 8 min
    This animated short tells the story of Trudy, a little girl who is equal parts truthful and rude. A bright-minded and quick-witted child, Trudy has an unfiltered and deeply curious way of looking at the world. Here, events force her to question what it means to speak the truth, and comes to understand how our differences make us unique.
  • Christopher Changes His Name
    Christopher Changes His Name
    Cilia Sawadogo 2000 6 min
    This animated short for children tells the story of Christopher, a little boy who didn't want to be called Christopher anymore. Such a common name! When Aunty Gail from Trinidad tells him a story about a Tiger, Christopher changes his name to Tiger. But then he finds a better name. When he has trouble cashing a birthday cheque, he realizes maybe he should stick with his original name... or maybe not?

    Part of the Talespinners collection, which uses vibrant animation to bring popular children’s stories from a wide range of cultural communities to the screen.
  • Ex-Child
    Ex-Child
    Jacques Drouin 1994 4 min
    This short animation tells the story of a young boy and his father, both of whom are enlisted to fight in the war. The boy's pride soon turns to fear as the bullets whistle overhead. His father takes his place and is immediately shot and killed. Horrified, the boy understands that war is not a game. Based on article 38 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, this film illustrates the right of children under the age of 15 not to be recruited into the armed forces.
  • The End of Summer
    The End of Summer
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    Michel Brault 1964 27 min
    Filmed at a summer cottage in the Laurentians north of Montreal, this film penetrates briefly the charmed world of the adolescent. Watching and listening, you sense the bittersweet mood of childhood's end, the poignant awareness that nothing will ever be the same after this summer at the lake. With English subtitles.
  • Especially You
    Especially You
    Moira Simpson 1989 16 min
    The last film in the series focuses on the skills pre-adolescents will need to cope with peer pressure. Animated sequences reflecting universal peer-pressure situations, and live-action role-playing sequences, help children gain skill in decision-making. When the action is stopped in the middle of a scene, the children are challenged to come up with their own solutions to the problem.
  • Flutter
    Flutter
    Howie Shia 2006 6 min
    In this short animation, a young boy takes a flying leap away from normal, waves goodbye to his classmates, and disappears into the cityscape and beyond. At the same time, a young girl is inspired to reinvent her space with art.
  • The Formation of Clouds
    The Formation of Clouds
    Marie-Hélène Turcotte 2010 10 min
    Childhood is a private, fragile terrain in which the marks of our explorations are inscribed. A delicate, sensitive evocation of burgeoning desire, The Formation of Clouds follows the steps of a young girl in the midst of transformation, clearly delineating that odd moment when one is no longer a child, exactly, but not yet an adult either. Using the simplicity of pen and ink drawings with graceful superimposition effects on glossy paper, Marie-Hélène Turcotte succeeds in capturing all the nuances of this transitional stage, in which the ingenuous wish to remain a child accompanies the yearning for self-discovery. With grace and sensitivity, this first short film becomes a visual poem that plays out at the frontier between reality and imagination. Film without words.
  • Flawed
    Flawed
    Andrea Dorfman 2010 12 min
    Flawed is nothing less than a beautiful gift from Andrea Dorfman's vivid imagination, a charming little film about very big ideas. Dorfman has the uncanny ability to transform the intensely personal into the wisely universal. She deftly traces her encounter with a potential romantic partner, questioning her attraction and the uneasy possibility of love. But, ultimately, Flawed is less about whether girl can get along with boy than whether girl can accept herself, imperfections and all.

    This film is both an exquisite tribute to the art of animation and a loving homage to storyboarding, a time-honoured way of rendering scenes while pointing the way to the dramatic arc of the tale.
  • Hairy Legs
    Hairy Legs
    Andrea Dorfman 2024 16 min
    Hairy Legs, an animated short film, documents a 13-year-old girl’s small yet life-changing act of rebellion on the road to womanhood and feminism. Deciding not to shave her legs led filmmaker Andrea Dorfman to question and ultimately defy society’s expectations.

    With charm, warmth and humour, Hairy Legs captures the universality of girls exploring gender, curiosity and freedom as they evolve from spending exuberant, carefree days on their bicycles to facing and defying stereotypes.
  • Head Full of Questions
    Head Full of Questions
    Moira Simpson 1989 19 min
    The first film in the Growing Up series tells curious pre-adolescents the facts they want to know, with an appealing mix of humour and imagination. Topics discussed include sexual attraction and sexual intercourse, fertilization, the growth of an embryo and birth of a baby, as well as a brief look at AIDS and at birth control. Detailed information about relationships is presented through the loving connection between two animated characters, Fred and Anna. The two hosts engage the students in discussion, encouraging them to ask questions and share their thoughts and feelings.
  • Inuuvunga, I am Inuk, I am Alive (Inuktitut version)
    Inuuvunga, I am Inuk, I am Alive (Inuktitut version)
    2004 57 min
    In this feature-length documentary, 8 Inuit teens with cameras offer a vibrant and contemporary view of life in Canada’s North. They also use their newly acquired film skills to confront a broad range of issues, from the widening communication gap between youth and their elders to the loss of their peers to suicide.
  • Invisible City
    Invisible City
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    Hubert Davis 2009 1 h 15 min
    Invisible City is a moving story of two boys from Regent Park crossing into adulthood – their mothers and mentors rooting for them to succeed; their environment and social pressures tempting them to make poor choices. Turning his camera on the often ignored inner city, Academy-award nominated director Hubert Davis sensitively depicts the disconnection of urban poverty and race from the mainstream.
  • If I Was God...
    If I Was God...
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    Cordell Barker 2015 8 min
    In this short animated film, a Grade 7 boy’s mind starts to wander while dissecting a frog in Biology class. What would you do if you suddenly found yourself charged with God-like powers? Would you use them for good? For bad? Perhaps a little of both? The possibilities seem endless. Oh to have the power to toy with life and death, to create monsters who can punish those who torment him daily, or better yet, to create that one perfect day with Lily, the love of his 12-year-old life!
  • Inuuvunga - I Am Inuk, I Am Alive
    Inuuvunga - I Am Inuk, I Am Alive
    Bobby Echalook Sarah Idlout , … 2004 57 min
    In this feature-length documentary, 8 Inuit teens with cameras offer a vibrant and contemporary view of life in Canada's North. They also use their newly acquired film skills to confront a broad range of issues, from the widening communication gap between youth and their elders to the loss of their peers to suicide. In Inuktitut with English subtitles.
  • Junior
    Junior
    Isabelle Lavigne  &  Stéphane Thibault 2008 1 h 36 min
    This full-length documentary offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at our national sport, hockey. Taking in an entire season of the Baie-Comeau Drakkar, this film reveals the daily lives of players and managers on this Quebec Major Junior Hockey League team.

    Admired and treated like professionals, junior hockey players are teenagers absorbed by their future. Trainers, shareholders, agents, scouts and parents: all eyes are fixed on these elite young players, even though only a tiny number of them will succeed in playing at the highest level.
  • Manivald
    Manivald
    Chintis Lundgren 2017 12 min
    Manivald, a fox, is turning 33. Overeducated, unemployed and generally uninspired, he lives with his overbearing, retired mother and spends his days learning piano while she makes his coffee and washes his socks. It is an easy life, but not a good one. Their unhealthy co-dependence is about to collapse when the washing machine breaks down and Toomas, a sexy and adventurous wolf repairman, arrives to fix it, and them.
  • Mon oncle Antoine (Dubbed Version)
    Mon oncle Antoine (Dubbed Version)
    Claude Jutra 1971 1 h 44 min
    There was a time when the general store was the crossroads of life, a place where a boy could learn all he needed for the way ahead--especially when his uncle was the storekeeper, and also the undertaker, and the nephew often called upon to lend a hand. This film recalls such a store in a village in the asbestos mining area of Quebec in the early 1940s. The film presents a hundred-and-one vignettes of village life--all the bitter-sweet nostalgia with which a man might remember the events that thrust him into manhood. The action takes place on Christmas Eve--the one time of the year when the mine closed its doors, and the store bustled with humanity. For a few hours the villagers could forget their poverty and converge on the store for gossip and revelry. In the midst of it all was Uncle Antoine, customary ebullience and ribald humour whetted by occasional recourse to the gin bottle, and always somewhere in the background, his nephew Jacques taking it all in. But for Jacques this night was to bring sudden initiation into some of the harsher, cruder realities of life, even acquaintance with tragedy and death. Mon oncle Antoine is about a Quebec that makes no headlines but reflects the whole of life, the ebb and flow of hope and despair that might be in anyone's memory.
  • Mon oncle Antoine  (English Subtitled)
    Mon oncle Antoine (English Subtitled)
    Claude Jutra 1971 1 h 44 min
    Claude Jutra's sweeping portrait of village life in 1940s Quebec has been called one of the greatest Canadian films of all time. Recalling a time when the local general store was the crossroads of life, the film illustrates the way a young boy sees the world and those closest to him – first through the eyes of a teenager, and later, as events change him, through the eyes of an adult. In French with English subtitles.
  • Nobody Waved Good-bye
    Nobody Waved Good-bye
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    Don Owen 1964 1 h 20 min
    This award-winning feature-length drama from the 1960s tells the story of a teenage boy who rebels against his parents' middle-class goals and conventions.
  • Nounours
    Nounours
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    Lou Rigoudy 2021 2 min
    A story of a girl and her teddy bear as she grows up and they grow apart.
  • Puberty Part 1 - Kwaozán'tsut ti pál7a 1 (Salish Version)
    Puberty Part 1 - Kwaozán'tsut ti pál7a 1 (Salish Version)
    Alanis Obomsawin 1975 14 min
    An intimate portrait of Marie Leo, a Sto:lo woman who was adopted into a Líl̓wat family as a baby. Marie’s gentle narrative of her remarkable early childhood demonstrates a deep connection to culture, land and family that continues to endure.

    This short is part of the L’il’wata series. In the early 1970s, at the outset of her documentary career, Alanis Obomsawin visited the Líl̓wat Nation, an Interior Salish First Nation in British Columbia, and created a series of shorts that provide personal narratives about Líl̓wat culture, histories and knowledge.
  • Puberty - Part 1
    Puberty - Part 1
    Alanis Obomsawin 1975 14 min
    An intimate portrait of Marie Leo, a Sto:lo woman who was adopted into a Líl̓wat family as a baby. Marie’s gentle narrative of her remarkable early childhood demonstrates a deep connection to culture, land and family that continues to endure.

    This short is part of the L’il’wata series. In the early 1970s, at the outset of her documentary career, Alanis Obomsawin visited the Líl̓wat Nation, an Interior Salish First Nation in British Columbia, and created a series of shorts that provide personal narratives about Líl̓wat culture, histories and knowledge.
  • Shop Class
    Shop Class
    Hart Snider 2018 8 min
    This film follows the trials and tribulations of 14 year old Hart Snider. Instead of the home economics class he wanted to take, he finds himself taking Industrial Arts from the ominous & legendary Mr. P. Hart is nearly suspended over a ukulele incident, which leads him to being alienated by his classmates, and that doesn’t even compare to the his worries about being electrocuted by Mr. P’s final project.
  • Twelve
    Twelve
    Lester Alfonso 2008 43 min
    If you could go back and speak to your 12-year-old self, what would you say? Through this documentary, Philippine-born filmmaker Lester Alfonso attempts to answer this question by interviewing twelve diverse subjects, each of whom moved to Canada at age 12, like himself.

    Produced as part of the Reel Diversity Competition for emerging filmmakers of colour. Reel Diversity is a National Film Board of Canada initiative in partnership with CBC Newsworld.
  • Little Thunder
    Little Thunder
    Nance Ackerman  &  Alan Syliboy 2009 2 min
    This animated short, inspired by the Mi'kmaq legend "The Stone Canoe" explores Indigenous humour. We follow Little Thunder as he reluctantly leaves his family and sets out on a cross-country canoe trip to become a man.
  • The Visitor
    The Visitor
    David Barlow-Krelina 2012 1 min
    A small boy is left alone to play in a large and empty house. A dark cloud starts to seep in from behind the mail slot at the front door. As it fills the space, a monster forms. The boy runs away, but the creature is always near. The chase will not end until the boy discovers the source of his fears. The film uses a combination of 2D hand-drawn animation, 3D backgrounds and particle effects.

    Produced as part of the 8th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.
  • Winds of Spring
    Winds of Spring
    Keyu Chen 2017 6 min
    Unfolding with the rhythm of the seasons, Winds of Spring tells the tender story of a young girl who, driven by the irrepressible need for self-fulfillment, decides to leave the family nest. Keyu Chen employs her signature style of fluid transitions and fine, spare lines inspired by Chinese ink painting in her delicately crafted first film.Keyu Chen makes use of fine lines and fluid transitions in her delicately crafted first film, which tells the tale of a young girl who, driven by the irrepressible need for self-fulfillment, dreams of leaving the family nest.
  • Where I'm From
    Where I'm From
    Claude Demers 2014 1 h 18 min
    This feature documentary represents a quest that is both personal and universal. Director Claude Demers (Barbers: A Men’s Story, Ladies in Blue) revisits the working-class neighbourhood of Verdun where he grew up and asks questions about the mysteries of his origins and his formative years, which were marked by abandonment. Bastien and Cédric, two young boys who are discovering the world around them, serve as the narrator’s alter egos. Between past and present, birth and death, Where I'm From traces the course of one man's redemption. The film marries realism with lyricism and a vibrant soundtrack that celebrates life.