Movies About Children And Childhood
There are plenty of coming-of-age movies about teenagers (often played by 20-year-olds), but live-action films about real children are more rare. I've been keeping a list of the ones I liked. Of course, some of these are more realistic than others:
| Name | Director | Country | Year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I Was Born, But... | Yasujirô Ozu | Japan | 1932 | IMDB | 
| Good Morning | Yasujirô Ozu | Japan | 1959 | IMDB | 
| Pather Panchali | Satyajit Ray | India | 1955 | IMDB | 
| Alamar | Pedro González-Rubio | Mexico | 2009 | IMDB | 
| Fan Chan* | Vitcha Gojiew, Songyos Sugmakanan | Thailand | 2003 | IMDB | 
| Treeless Mountain | So Yong Kim | Korea | 2008 | IMDB | 
| Which Way Home | Rebecca Cammisa | USA | 2009 | IMDB | 
| Owl and the Sparrow | Stephane Gauger | Vietnam | 2009 | IMDB | 
| Please Vote For Me (documentary) | Weijun Chen | China | 2007 | IMDB | 
| The 400 Blows | François Truffaut | France | 1959 | IMDB | 
| Au Revoir Les Enfants | Louis Malle | France | 1987 | IMDB | 
| My Life As A Dog | Lasse Hallström | Sweden | 1985 | IMDB | 
| Muddy River | Kôhei Oguri | Japan | 1981 | IMDB | 
| The Chorus | Christophe Barratier | France | 2004 | IMDB | 
| Nobody Knows | Hirokazu Koreeda | Japan | 2004 | IMDB | 
| I Wish | Hirokazu Koreeda | Japan | 2011 | IMDB | 
| Lessons From A Calf (documentary) | Hirokazu Koreeda | Japan | 1991 | IMDB | 
| Boy | Taika Waititi | New Zealand | 2010 | IMDB | 
| Hunt for the Wilderpeople | Taika Waititi | New Zealand | 2016 | IMDB | 
| The Florida Project | Sean Baker | USA | 2017 | IMDB | 
| The Night I Swam (Takara - La nuit où j'ai nagé) | Kohei Igarashi, Damien Manivel | Japan | 2017 | IMDB | 
| The Spirit Of The Beehive | Víctor Erice | Spain | 1973 | IMDB | 
| Summer 1993 | Carla Simón | Spain | 2017 | IMDB | 
| The Fits | Anna Rose Holmer | USA | 2015 | IMDB | 
| White Sun | Deepak Rauniyar | Nepal | 2016 | IMDB | 
| Celia | Ann Turner | Australia | 1989 | IMDB | 
| Sivas | Kaan Müjdeci | Turkey | 2014 | IMDB | 
| A Summer At Grandpa's | Hou Hsiao-hsien | Taiwan | 1984 | IMDB | 
| Petite Maman | Céline Sciamma | France | 2021 | IMDB | 
| Where Is the Friend's House? | Abbas Kiarostami | Iran | 1987 | IMDB | 
| The Traveler | Abbas Kiarostami | Iran | 1974 | IMDB | 
| Tótem | Lila Avilés | Mexico | 2023 | IMDB | 
| Misunderstood | Luigi Comencini | Italy | 1966 | IMDB | 
* "Fan Chan" was streaming under the poor translation of "My Girl" for a while but now it's gone. More recently, it has been restored to 4K and was apparently showing on Netflix in Thailand (not in the USA), but there is no 4K bluray.
The following long list on mubi.com includes a great many I haven't yet seen (and some I wouldn't put in my list since they are animated and/or too far on the side of fantasy):
MUBI: Recommended Films About Children
If there's a movie about children you especially recommend, let me know.

 
         
         
    






