Boyhood

A completely unique film, even though you won’t find anything particularly unusual in its plot. What we see are twelve years of an utterly ordinary life: a boy goes to first grade, lives through his parents’ divorce, gets into music and Star Wars, falls in love for the first time, tries alcohol, dates a girl, and goes to college…

The twist is that the film itself was shot over exactly twelve years — the same amount of time it took for the main character to truly grow up. It’s important to note that this is a fiction film, not a documentary. Plot details were invented along the way, and at times the script for a scene was written the very night before filming. Linklater is famously obsessed with long-term cinematic projects — just think of the Before Sunrise trilogy, where the second film came out eight years after the first, and the third another eight years later.

🏆 Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for Best Director.