Backlights

For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.

After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.

In 1960s Tulsa, class divisions ignite a violent rivalry between the working-class Greasers and the privileged Socs. When a deadly encounter forces two Greasers, Ponyboy and Johnny, to flee, their struggle for survival and redemption exposes the fragile innocence and enduring bonds of youth on the wrong side of town.

The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’

After learning that a boy their age has been accidentally killed near their rural homes, four boys decide to go see the body. Gordie, Vern, Chris, and Teddy encounter a mean junk man and a marsh full of leeches, but they also learn more about one another and their very different home lives. Just a lark at first, the boys' adventure evolves into a defining event in their lives.

County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.

Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend.

The story of Skip, a young ex-convict who takes a position as a night janitor at an old-west theme park. His supervisor Archie, teaches him the ropes, but more importantly attempts to convey critical philosophical messages through a series of four stories: a down and out boxer is given the opportunity to become a real golden gloves killer; an assassin kidnaps three people in order to find out who hired him for his latest hit; a new recruit is initiated into a lodge of fez-wearing businessmen where hazing can take a malevolent turn; and a member of a suicide club introduces real fear into a man about to jump to his death.

Franklin Shepard is a talented Broadway composer who abandons his theater career and all his friends in New York in order to produce films in Los Angeles. The story begins at the height of his Hollywood fame and moves backwards in time, showing snapshots of the most important moments in Frank’s life that shaped the man he is today. A live recording of the 2024 Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's musical, filmed at the Hudson Theatre in New York City.

A lifetime of loneliness ends when Elise meets a kindred spirit, finally finding understanding and friendship in an unexpected encounter.

When East Coast teen Mandy Meyers moves to Los Angeles with her family, she's thrown into the fast life at McDermott High, where the pretty girls rule the school and two very different guys want to date her.

On a day in April 1996, four stories play out in the confines of a flat in the heart of Oslo.

Expecting the usual tedium that accompanies a summer in the Catskills with her family, 17-year-old Frances 'Baby' Houseman is surprised to find herself stepping into the shoes of a professional hoofer—and unexpectedly falling in love.

Sol and Cami are best friends. Sol goes to Cami's house, trying to get her out and hang with their old friends. This is not easy as it seems, and music, the passion that bonds them, could be the solution.

Peer behind the curtain as a cast of neurodivergent teens prepare to come of age and hit the stage in their school’s time-travelling, John Farnham–themed musical.

"Dual View" is a film that follows the lives of two young individuals, Tomás and Samot, with different routines and perspectives. Tomás is a worker in a bakery, finding motivation in his job and enjoying leisure moments like walking with his pig and helping a needy friend. Meanwhile, Samot is a constantly tardy university student, disheartened by his classes and feeling isolated in his academic environment. The film explores the duality of their lives, showcasing their ups and downs, social interactions, and reflections on the past and future. In the end, faced with the question of returning to high school or continuing on their current paths, both characters reflect on their choices and experiences, revealing their desires and perspectives for the future.

A deadpan young man obsessed with death meets an eccentric septuagenarian who teaches him to live life to the fullest.

Poppy Valentine, a young circus performer who has grown up in her family's traveling circus, has never dreamed of what life would be like outside of its fences. However, now in her mid-20s and with more unwelcomed responsibility weighing her down, she's desperate to figure out if this life is for her.

Matti and Niila, growing up in the mid-sixties in the harsh and conservative environment of a Finnish-speaking part of Tornedalen in Swedish Laponia, close to the Finnish border. Their big dream is to become rock stars. In the present the now grown-up Matti feels guilt for the death of his drug-addicted rock star friend Niila.