20 best movies like The Black Balloon (2008)

A coming of age dramedy where infidelity, real estate, and Lyme disease have two families falling apart on Long Island in the early eighties. Scott, 15, is at the point in his life when he finds out that the most important people around him, his father, his mother, and his brother, are not exactly who he thought they were. They are flawed and they are human.

A socially awkward teenage math prodigy finds new confidence and new friendships when he lands a spot on the British squad at the International Mathematics Olympiad.

Australian teenager Heidi is left with little choice but to leave home after she's caught red-handed with her mother's boyfriend. With few options, Heidi ends up in Jindabyne, a tourist community. Upon meeting Joe at a bar, she pursues a relationship with him and tries to find something resembling a normal home life. Heidi makes small strides by getting a job and finding a place to stay, but her relationship with Joe must overcome more than its share of hurdles.

Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.

Three suburban English families' lives intertwine with tragic consequences.

The story of a normal Italian family in which come out the dreams of those who have lost their possibilities and of those who want to realize them. Carlo and Giulia are a married couple who have each given up their aspirations in order to live an average life. Their 19-year-old son, Paolo, is having trouble finding an identity, while their 18-year-old daughter, Valentina, has already figured out how to use sex to her advantage. The family goes through a crisis when Carlo begins having an affair, Giulia attempt to seduce the director of a local stage production she is in, and Valentina does what she does best to land an audition for a TV show

A hard-partying high school senior's philosophy on life changes when he meets the not-so-typical "nice girl."

Simon has Asperger's syndrome and doesn't like changes in his life. He lives with his big brother Sam and Sam's girlfriend Frida. When Frida can't stand having to adapt to Simon's peculiarities anymore she takes off, leaving Simon with having to find a new, perfect, girlfriend for his brother.

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.

Seventeen talented Australian directors from diverse artistic disciplines each create a chapter of the hauntingly beautiful novel by multi award-winning author Tim Winton. The linking and overlapping stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives in a stunning portrait of a small coastal community. As characters face second thoughts and regret, relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.

A coming-of-age story based on the best-selling novel by Stephen Chbosky, which follows 15-year-old freshman Charlie, an endearing and naive outsider who is taken under the wings of two seniors. A moving tale of love, loss, fear and hope - and the unforgettable friends that help us through life.

The story of an adult and a teenage couple during a brief summer holiday by the sea. While Nic's parents remain trapped in a precarious mutual dependency despite repeated attempts at reconciliation, their 12-year-old son tries to come to terms with his father's traumatizing violent outbursts in games with other children. He tries to teach Marie, who is of his age and suffers from her own relationship with her father, to feel nothing. In fact, both of them are transformed by their experience of the joys and pains of first love.

A boy experiences first love, friendships and injustices growing up in 1960s Taiwan.

An acclaimed writer, his ex-wife, and their teenaged children come to terms with the complexities of love in all its forms over the course of one tumultuous year.

Cecile is a decadent young girl who lives with her rich playboy father, Raymond. When Anne, Raymond's old love interest, comes to Raymond's villa, Cecile is afraid for her way of life.

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.

In Brooklyn circa 1900, the Nolans manage to enjoy life on pennies despite great poverty and Papa's alcoholism. We come to know these people well through big and little troubles: Aunt Sissy's scandalous succession of "husbands"; the removal of the one tree visible from their tenement; and young Francie's desire to transfer to a better school...if irresponsible Papa can get his act together.

Pim lives in a run-down house in a dead-end street somewhere on the Flanders coast, together with his mother Yvette Bulteel. Life here smells of cold French fries, cheap cigarettes, vermouth and stale beer. Mother Yvette uses her friend Etienne, with his lousy grey Fiat, as a driver for the nights she has to “perform”. As a kid Pim dreams of a better life, imagining princesses and beauty queens. But when Pim turns 16 he dreams of Gino, the handsome boy next door, instead. Ever since they were children there has been this tension between them. Now Gino is Pim’s motorcycling hero. Cold mockery, little humiliations and tiny bits of hope make up Pim’s life. No wonder he sometimes flees to his dream world.

The film is set in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. It is told from the perspective of Ma Xiaojun nicknamed Monkey, a teenage boy. Monkey and his friends are free to roam the streets of Beijing day and night because the Cultural Revolution has caused their parents and most adults to be either busy or away. The story revolves around Monkey's dalliances with his roguish male friends and his subsequent angst-filled crush with Mi Lan.

Two schizophrenics meet during therapy and fall in love. Unfortunately they are on a road to nowhere...

The drama tells the story of Lennon's teenage years and the start of his journey to becoming a successful musician. The story also examines the impact on his early life and personality of the two dominant females in his childhood

Matt falls for Casey, the new girl in school. She's fun-loving and eccentric, but there's a darkness to her whimsy that Matt can't begin to comprehend. When Casey attempts to commit suicide, her parents place her in a mental institution. Matt springs her out, and together the young lovers head on a road trip. They believe their love can "cure" Casey's problems. Matt starts to wonder, though, if are they inspired or misguided.

Annecy is no tourist destination for three working-class Algerian brothers and their father, in the months after their mother has died. Marc is deeply troubled: he tries to stiff drug dealers and then plots revenge. Christophe is released from jail, lands a job, and must overcome various temptations in order to keep it. Olivier, nearing 18, may be falling in love with Hicham...

A man moves his two daughters to Italy after their mother dies in a car accident, in order to revitalize their lives. Genoa changes all three of them as the youngest daughter starts to see the ghost of her mother, while the older one discovers her sexuality.

In the Yorkshire countryside, working-class tomboy Mona meets the exotic, pampered Tasmin. Over the summer season, the two young women discover they have much to teach one another, and much to explore together.

A coming-of-age story about an eleven-year-old girl who idolizes her troubled sixteen-year-old neighbor.

Nineteen-year-old Ari confronts both his sexuality and his Greek family. Ari despises his once-beloved parents, former radical activists, for having entombed themselves in insular tradition. Ari is obsessed with gay sex, although he does make an unenthusiastic attempt to satisfy the sister of one of his best friends. While all of this is going on, he's facing problems with his traditional Greek parents, who have no clue about his sexual activities.

Samson and Delilah's world is small- an isolated community in the Central Australian desert. When tragedy strikes they turn their backs on home and embark on a journey of survival. Lost, unwanted and alone the discover that life isn't always fair, but love never judges.

Åmål is a small insignificant town where nothing ever happens, where the latest trends are out of date when they get there. Young Elin has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to guys, but the fact is that she has never done it. Another girl in her school, Agnes, is in love with her but is too shy to do anything about it. For different reasons, Elin ends up at Agnes' birthday party as the only guest. They have a girl's night out together but after that Elin desperately avoids Agnes, refusing to even consider her own homosexuality.

Fifteen-year-old Charlotte Flax is tired of her wacky mom moving their family to a different town any time she feels it is necessary. When they move to a small Massachusetts town and Mrs. Flax begins dating a shopkeeper, Charlotte and her 9-year-old sister, Kate, hope that they can finally settle down. But when Charlotte's attraction to an older man gets in the way, the family must learn to accept each other for who they truly are.

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.

Set in the mid 1990s in Singapore, ILOILO chronicles the relationship between a family and their maid from Ilo Ilo, a province in the Philippines.

Jake and Kristy Briggs are newlyweds. Being young, they are perhaps a bit unprepared for the full reality of marriage and all that it (and their parents) expect from them. Do they want babies? Their parents certainly want them to. Is married life all that there is? Things certainly aren't helped by Jake's friend Davis, who always seems to turn up just in time to put a spanner in the works.

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.

Mike has felt alienated and alone for as long as he can remember, until a new boy arrives at his school - awakening feelings and a world of possibilities he'd never before dared to dream of.

A young, English working-class boy spends his free time caring for and training his pet falcon.

For many years, four teenage orphans at an Australian outback convent have watched their younger comrades find new parents, and realize that they may never be adopted. The Reverend Mother sends the four boys away on a seaside vacation, where they meet Teresa and Fearless, a couple who would make perfect parents. The youths compete with one another to be the one Teresa and Fearless decide to adopt.

Pianist David Helfgott, driven by his father and teachers, has a breakdown. Years later he returns to the piano, to popular if not critical acclaim.

Story of two gorgeous, young French boys who begin a passionate relationship that boils over and threatens to destroy both their lives. Shy Mathieu is 18-years-old and on summer vacation in the south of France. He spends his days lazily sunning himself at the beach, until he spies the handsome Cédric and falls in love. The film, like a dream, flows back and forth between the past and present, often asking us to fill the deliberate jumps in time.

In a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Kurdish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. When Lateef is given heavier tasks to compensate for new Afghan worker Rahmat, he resents his displacement and treats Rahmat cruelly. After one of his pranks, however, Lateef discovers Rahmat's secret--he is a girl named Baran. Latif's heart softens towards Baran and he shows his new affection for her by doing what he can to ease the hardships she suffers at work. revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.Baran is a 2001 Iranian film directed by Majid Majidi, based on an original script by Majid Majidi. The movie is set during recent times in which there are a large number of Afghan refugees living on the outskirts of Tehran. Almost a silent movie, Baran won a number of awards both nationally and internationally for the director and writer Majid Majidi.

In the 1950s, brothers Jacey and Doug Holt, who come from the poorer side of their sleepy Midwestern town, vie for the affections of the wealthy, lovely Abbott sisters. Lady-killer Jacey alternates between Eleanor and Alice, wanting simply to break the hearts of rich young women. But sensitive Doug has a real romance with Pamela, which Jacey and the Abbott patriarch, Lloyd, both frown upon.

New York, 1937. A teenager hired to star in Orson Welles' production of Julius Caesar becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.

Duncan Mudge, mid-teens, lives apart from his rural world populated by his distant father and rough local kids. His main companionship is a chicken left after his mother's death until the neighbor's son befriends him.

Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster who wears an old wedding dress and lives in the dilapidated Satis House, asks Pip's "Uncle Pumblechook" (who is actually Joe's uncle) to find a boy to play with her adopted daughter Estella. Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with whom he falls in love,then Pip a humble orphan suddenly becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor.

19-year old Belle practices playing the violin diligently, but is unable to impart her music with a sensitive undertone. Her life changes when she discovers that sexual desire stimulates passion in her music.

A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.

The true story of Rocco Granata, an Italian coal miner's son who followed his passion for music against his father's wishes and social barriers.

A girl dying of leukemia compiles a list of things she'd like to do before passing away. Topping the list is her desire to lose her virginity.

The death of the Kimbrough family matriarch affects the three male survivors of the clan. Widower Easy tries to reconnect with his old flame, Marg. Eldest son and struggling musician Guy moves back to town, feeling guilty that he missed the funeral. His brother, Beagle, who was his mother's caretaker, falls for Marg's granddaughter, Georgia, a chronically ill girl who fears her time is growing short.

After weeks of traveling through Europe, the immature William finds himself in Copenhagen, the place of his father’s birth. He befriends the youthful Effy, who works in William’s hotel as part of an internship program, and they set off to find William’s last living relative. Effy’s mix of youthful exuberance and wisdom challenges William unlike any woman ever has. As the attraction builds, he must come to grips with destabilizing elements of his family’s sordid past.