The movie industry loves to capitalize on stories about teens entering the ‘adult world.’ As teens it’s easy to see the fallacious inconsistencies between the perceptions of young people in these movies and how we actually live our lives, but some of these ‘Coming of Age’ films do a decent job of depicting the messy transition to independent life. Below are some films that hit the mark for me.

Juno: Nominated for four Academy Awards, Juno is a humorous telling of a teen pregnancy and a girls choice to be a surrogate for a young couple. Ellen Paige and Michael Cera have an endearing awkward chemistry between them and make the film an instant classic.

Dope: Three friends obsessed with 90s hip hop culture and playing music in their punk band get tangled up with the wrong crowd and end up on a wild adventure across LA. A more modern approach to the teen movie medium, Dope is an incredible movie.

Ghost World: Every Alt-Cultured girl’s aesthetic dream, this film accurately depicts the unraveling of a friendship between two girls beginning to invest in other relationships and determine who they want to be in their post high school lives.

The Way Way Back: Forced to spend the summer in a vacation town with his Mom and her awful boyfriend, our quiet protagonist Duncan escapes to a summer job at a waterpark to learn about life and find the role models he severely lacks at home.

Girlhood: A French film about a young girl who comes out of her shell when she joins three of her confident and exuberant neighbors group of friends, Girlhood touches on the sacrifices we make to join a community and the choices we make to stay in them.

Rushmore: Too invested in his extracurriculars, and saving Latin, young playwright Rushmore battles his love for an older woman and possibly flunking out of prep school in Wes Anderson’s second film. It’s quirky and fun and has some great British rock in it.

There are, of course, tons of other coming of age movies I would love to write about, but these are some of the greatest films to come out of that tricky ‘coming of age’ genre. Do you agree with me? What are some of your favorite coming of age films? Tweet me @emmadubtv or on our main account @WYBeacon and let me know what you think.