20 best movies like Teenage Dirtbag (2009)

In 1957, a son and mother flee the East and an abusive boyfriend to find a new life, and end up in Seattle, where the mother meets a polite garage mechanic. The boy continually gets into trouble by hanging out with the wrong crowd. The mom marries the mechanic, but they soon find out that he's an abusive and unreasoning alcoholic, and they struggle to maintain hope in an impossible situation as the boy grows up with plans to escape the small town by any means possible. Based on a true story by Tobias Wolff.

David Sinclair seems to have everything going for him: he's smart, musically talented, and very successful. To top off his senior year in high school, his band is trying to get a recording session. Therefore, David's suicide leaves everyone, especially his best friend and band-mate, Chris, with a lot of questions.

Set in the landscape of a rural southern town, "George Washington" is a stunning portrait of how a group of young kids come to grips with a hard world of choices and consequences. During an innocent game in an abandoned amusement park, a member of the group dies. Narrated by one of the children, the film follows the kids as they struggle to balance their own ambitions and relationships against a tragic lie.

Life of a King is the true story of one man's mission to give inner city kids of Washington DC something he never had - a future. After being incarcerated for eighteen years, Eugene Brown established the Big Chair Chess Club to get kids off the streets and working towards lives they never believed they were capable of. This is his inspirational story.

Eka and Natia leave their childhood behind and ignore societal customs to escape from their turbulent family lives.

Four young people navigate the suburban wonderland of metro-Detroit looking for love and adventure on the last weekend of summer.

When David Greene receives a football scholarship to a prestigious prep school in the 1950s, he feels pressure to hide the fact that he is Jewish from his classmates and teachers, fearing that they may be anti-Semitic. He quickly becomes the big man on campus thanks to his football skills, but when his Jewish background is discovered, his worst fears are realized and his friends turn on him with violent threats and public ridicule.

Based on a true story. Liz Murray is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted parents. Liz becomes homeless at 15 and after a tragedy comes upon her, she begins her work to finish high school.

Tod Lubitch is born with a deficient immune system. As such, he must spend the rest of his life in a completely sterile environment. His room is completely hermetically sealed against bacteria and virus, his food is specially prepared, and his only human contact comes in the form of gloved hands. The movie follows his life into a teenager.

This tells the story of a strong friendship between a young boy with Morquio's syndrome and an older boy who is always bullied because of his size. Adapted from the novel, Freak the Mighty, the film explores a building of trust and friendship. Kevin, an intelligent guy helps out Maxwell to improve his reading skills. In return, Kevin wants Maxwell to take him out places since he is not allowed out unauthorized. Being the social outcasts of the town, Kevin and Maxwell come to realize that they are similar to each other and accept that they are "freaks" and nothing will stop them.

Sam loves facts. He wants to know about UFOs and horror movies and airships and ghosts and scientists, and how it feels to kiss a girl. And because he has leukemia he wants to know the facts about dying. Sam needs answers to the questions nobody will answer.

The story of five teenage girls who form an unlikely bond after beating up a teacher who has sexually harassed them. They build a solid friendship but their wild ways begin to get out of control.

After the death of Raya Green's(Rutina Wesley) sister, she gets out from her classes at school, and sees a stomp crew practicing. She meets Bishop(Dwain Murphy) which is the dance crew leader. She then meets Michelle and does a stomp battle with her. They become enemies then friends later on. Her uptight mom pushes her to pass the test to get into Medical school, but she thinks she failed....

Centred around greyhound racing in a Catholic community after the "Troubles" have ended but where their legacy remains strong. Donal is a 14-year old who works in a greyhound racing kennel owned by Good Joe. If Donal's favourite greyhound, The Mighty Celt, wins three races in a row, Good Joe has promised him full ownership.

After being assigned as study partners, two Chicana high schoolers find a bond that confuses them at times.

Follows four friends in their quest to form a punk band. As workers protests sweep across the country, Janek and Staszek, the sons of a navy man, the rebellious Kazik, and the affluent Diabel gel as a band, but their disparate lives are touched by social turmoil and outside perceptions.

Igor, aged 15, and his father Roger deal in housing and peddling illicit labor in the outlying districts of Liege, Belgium. Scams, lies and swindling rule their lives. When one of his father’s illegal workers gets injured on the job and asks Igor to promise to take care of his wife and baby, Igor finds himself at a crossroad. He wants to keep the promise, but the price would be to betray his father.

In the boring desert of New Mexico, a single mother raises her two teenage daughters, Shade and Trudi, whose deepest desire is to leave the dead calm town. Shade is the type to escape in her extravagant fantasies while Trudi is so rebelious it could drive her away.

The son of a Vietnam War Veteran must deal with neighborhood bullies as well as his dad's post-traumatic stress disorder while growing up in the deep south in the 1970's.

Alejandro, a tough and ambitious Latino street orphan on the verge of adolescence, lives and works in an auto-body repair shop in a sprawling junkyard on the outskirts of Queens, New York. In this chaotic world of adults, young Alejandro struggles to make a better life for himself and his 16-year-old sister, Isamar.

Three lives of three young people intersect over the course of one summer. A rich student and a young working-class man accidentally destroy a diner when their impromptu road race takes a disastrous turn. Ordered by a judge to spend the summer repairing the building, they find themselves becoming rivals for the affections of the owner's daughter.

In this uplifting film based on a true story, coach Jim Ellis (Terrence Howard) shocks the community and changes lives when, aided by a local janitor (Bernie Mac), he sets out to form Philadelphia's first black swim team. But the odds are against them as they battle rigid rules, racism and more.

A teenage girl, distraught from her vain attempt to connect with her estranged mother, resorts to cutting herself. When she develops an online relationship with an older woman, she learns to accept her sexuality and the endless solitude of sprawling suburbia.

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a patient named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

After the bizarre death of her brother, Johana Burwood must return home after four years, to face her strange siblings, her out of touch father and her very touchy past.

Ten-year-old Jojo lives with his father, a security guard with a volatile personality who drinks to manage the unspoken despair he feels about his wife's absence, which he refuses to discuss with his son. In the midst of so much uncertainty, Jojo finds comfort and happiness in caring for an abandoned baby bird, a jackdaw, who is even more vulnerable than himself.

A sweeping multigenerational story set against the backdrop of the raw, roaring New York City of the late 1980s; adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, hardcore punk rock, the unbridled optimism and reckless stupidity of the young—and old—are all major elements in this heart-aching tale of the son of diehard hippies and his strange odyssey through the extremes of late 20th century youth culture.

Based on the best selling autobiography by Irish expat Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes follows the experiences of young Frankie and his family as they try against all odds to escape the poverty endemic in the slums of pre-war Limerick. The film opens with the family in Brooklyn, but following the death of one of Frankie's siblings, they return home, only to find the situation there even worse. Prejudice against Frankie's Northern Irish father makes his search for employment in the Republic difficult despite his having fought for the IRA, and when he does find money, he spends the money on drink.

The We and the I is the heartfelt and comical story of the final bus ride home for a group of young high school students and graduates.

In Barrow, Alaska, teenagers Qalli and Aivaaq find their bond tested when a seal-hunting trip goes wrong, resulting in the death of their friend.

A deadbeat teacher helps an angry, aimless teenager find direction in life during his final year of high school.

PK, an English orphan terrorized for his family's political beliefs in Africa, turns to his only friend, a kindly world-wise prisoner, Geel Piet. Geel teaches him how to box with the motto “fight with your fists and lead with your heart”. As he grows to manhood, PK uses these words to take on the system and the injustices he sees around him - and finds that one person really can make a difference.

A Catholic New Yorker falls in love with a girl and decides to marry her. But then he learns that she was once raped.

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.

Alan, Red, and Smitty spend high summer on the Jersey Shore roving the boardwalk and getting into trouble. But the discovery of good old fashioned treasure sets the friends on an escalating course of suspicion and violence in this atmospheric thriller.

One Monday morning Katya, Vika and Zhanna learn that there will be a school disco, their first disco, on the coming Saturday night. The girls feverishly start preparing for the event, which rapidly becomes the most important moment ever in their universe, and looks like the ideal way to escape their daily lives...

In a story fueled by rhythm and blues, a young boy's life is shaped by love and the stories of a cast of characters in the boarding house where he lives in 1960s Lackawanna, New York.

A vivid, dynamic Southern coming-of-age drama, takes place in the transitional space between high school and college, when life seems to be all questions and no answers, and the future is scarily wide open. Set in and around a Charleston, SC Baptist church, weaving through this ensemble piece are three main characters - Brea, an introspective pastor's daughter experiencing debilitating doubt, the hyperactive Laura, Brea's best friend and a devout believer, and Tim, the open-hearted son of a single father, confronting his homosexuality for the first time. Tensions and buried feelings abound, as colleges are chosen and adults behave badly, as Brea, Laura and Tim attempt to hang onto what they have, all the while yearning to break free.

The coach of a women's swim team parlays her success into an opportunity to build her school's men's golf team.

Jess, age 18, and Moss, age 12 are second cousins in the dark-fire tobacco fields of rural Western Kentucky. Without immediate families that they can relate to, and lacking friends their own age, they only have each other. Over the course of a summer they venture on a journey exploring deep secrets and hopes of a future while being confronted with fears of isolation, abandonment and an unknown tomorrow.

A destitute 14-year-old struggles to keep his life together despite harsh abuse at his mother's hands, harsher abuse at his father's, and a growing separation from his slightly older brother.

Holly has everything it takes to be a star; the voice, the dream and the dedication, but she lacks the means to break away from her humble Texas upbringing. Then she gets the chance to attend an art and music school on the East coast and her future suddenly looks bright. But the road to stardom is a bumpy one.

The story of an aspiring young filmmaker's encounter with a grumpy fount of movie lore.

A seventeen-year-old country boy working in Beijing as a courier has his bicycle stolen, and finds it with a schoolboy his age.

Based on true events amid the wreckage and chaos dealt by Hurricane Katrina; one basketball coach in Marrero, Louisiana just will not give up. Coach Al Collins(Forest Whitaker), gathers other players from hard-hit schools and builds a team actually worthy enough to go to the state playoffs. A very honest look at what can be done with the right people having the desire and fortitude to pick up and

In seeking her own redemption from the one man of whom she is most afraid, 10-year-old Cadi Forbes discovers a secret sin haunting her community of Welsh immigrants in 1850s Appalachia.

During the 1970s a student named Gilles gets entangled in contemporary political turmoils although he would rather just be a creative artist. While torn between his solidarity to his friends and his personal ambitions he falls in love with Christine.

A gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.

Growing up in a rural town filled with violent delinquents, Jack has learned to do what it takes to survive, despite having an oblivious mother and no father. After his aunt falls ill and a younger cousin comes to stay with him, the hardened 15-year-old discovers the importance of friendship, family, and looking for happiness even in the most desolate of circumstances.

Jake Taylor has everything. He has a beautiful girl, he's the champion in basketball and beer pong, and everyone loves him. Then, an old childhood friend, whom Jake used to be friends with, commits suicide. Jake begins to think. He wonders what he could've done to save his friend's life. A youth minister tells him that Jake needs God. So Jake becomes a Christian. However, things begin to spin out of control. His dad is cheating on his mom, his girlfriend is pregnant, and his former friends ridicule and mock him. During all this, Jake is going to realize just what it means to be a Christian and how, to save a life.