Dog YearsMovies like Dog Years
- Key Features:
- Coming-of-age, Teenage angst, Existential crisis, Bucket list, Mortality, Identity, Self-discovery, Car accident, Dog, Imagination, Cynicism
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Teenagers, Indie film enthusiasts, Contemplative viewers, Those interested in coming-of-age stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Anxiety → Determination
Dog Years

Stella is a clumsy, cynical, imaginative and tormented teenage girl. After a life-changing car accident involving a dog, she convinces herself she must count her age in dog years: one year of her life counts for seven, and now that she’s turning sixteen, she is a centennial. For this reason, Stella thinks she has not much time left to live and pens a bucket list of all the things she would like to achieve before she dies.
Dog Years
Margherita is a 14 year old living in Milano, who shares everything with her friends. They discuss clothes, music, school and that first kiss. A delightful coming-of-age film in which the here and now is all that really matters. Where every little thing is so very important and where feelings sometimes bubble over. In your teens, there’s no room for anything but friendship and love.

Having just moved back in with his working-class parents, twentysomething on-and-off philosophy undergrad Walter navigates turn-of-the-millennium Turin and Gen-X ennui.

Come ogni 14enne Carolina, detta Caro,è impegnata a districarsi tra la scuola, gli amici e il rapporto spesso conflittuale con i genitori, si trova improvvisamente alle prese con i turbamenti legati al primo amore che ha il nome e il volto di Massimiliano. Ad aiutarla nel suo cammino verso la scoperta delle gioie e dei dolori sentimentali ci saranno le sue amiche del cuore e la sua famiglia

Vivien, an accomplished student with a passion for physics, and Roy, a troubled young man, are involved in an accident that forces them to reclaim their lives one minute at the time.

Ottone, a professional dog sitter who's uncertain about most things in life, asks an analyst if he made the right decision love-wise while recounting the significant relationships he had with four women.

An 18th birthday mushroom trip brings free-spirited Elliott face-to-face with her wisecracking 39-year-old self. But when Elliott’s "old ass" starts handing out warnings about what her younger self should and shouldn't do, Elliott realizes she has to rethink everything about family, love, and what's becoming a transformative summer.

Giulia and Carlo have been happy together for three years, but Giulia's announcement that she is pregnant sends him into a secret panic. Terrified at his imminent entry into the adult world of irreversible responsibilities, Carlo finds himself tempted by a bewitching 18-year-old girl, Francesca, whom he meets by chance at a wedding. The possibility of one last youthful crazy fling before the impending prison of parenthood proves to be too attractive to resist.

This is the story of 23-year-old Laura who lives in the largest city in the world and yet feels alone. She also knows the exact date in which she'll die: April 30. What Laura doesn't know is what she'll do from now till then, and thus she enrolls in a group of optimists, which she finds pathetic but fun. In that group she writes a list of 10 things she wants to do before she dies, some that mean a lot and some that are a lot of fun. The first thing on her list is to save a life.

A dog finds the meaning of his own existence through the lives of the humans he meets.

Follows Gia, who has to deal with the challenges and insecurities of "adulting" during her 21st birthday.

A shy student suddenly becomes the center of attention when she wins a huge birthday party that she never asked for.

An aimless young troublemaker, Alessandro, squanders his days gambling and getting into fights, and he often spends his nights in jail. With few prospects, he begrudgingly accepts a job as a companion to Giorgio, an elderly poet suffering from Alzheimer’s. On their daily walks, the two banter and become friends, and Alessandro quickly learns more about this forgotten poet as the old man’s memory drifts. After learning a secret from Giorgio’s past, Alessandro and his friends work to uncover the mystery of this tale, an unexpected history lesson and a touching coming-of-age adventure.

Marleen is in her early 20s, works in a movie theater, still lives at home and is somehow aimless. Her parents torment her with questions about her future and her brother is a high-flyer who has already traveled halfway around the world. When a tragic accident plunges her into sheer endless grief, Marleen just wants to get away. Equipped with the bare essentials, she sets off on a journey into the unknown.

A group of suburban teenagers try to support each other through the difficult task of becoming adults.

Italy from the '80s to the present day, through the dreams, loves, successes and failures of four friends.

Ava, 13, is spending the summer on the Atlantic coast when she learns that she will lose her sight sooner than expected. Her mother decides to act as if everything were normal so as to spend their best summer ever. Ava confronts the problem in her own way. She steals a big black dog that belongs to a young man on the run...

When her mother sends her on a quest to complete a teenage bucket list, a young woman uncovers family secrets, finds romance — and rediscovers herself.

A shy teenager on a summer vacation experiences the joy and pain of young adulthood when he forges an unlikely bond with an older girl.

A dog goes on quest to discover his purpose in life over the course of several lifetimes with multiple owners.

A boy, obsessed with comparing himself with those less fortunate, experiences a different life at the home of his aunt and uncle in 1959 Sweden.

A narcissistic artist's world turns upside down after his wife's affair and a disastrous exhibition of his work.

Ambitious overachiever Hanna just needs one more kid before her life is perfect. Instead, her baby daddy unexpectedly dumps her. Suddenly, she finds herself without a place to live, job or family. With every fiber of her being set for victory, Hanna refuses to give up and decides to win him back. But to get there means having to win something much more important, love and desire for herself and who she is.

A 22 year-old Bangladeshi-Italian Muslim boy meets a beautiful, exciting Italian girl who makes him re-analyze his beliefs and culture.

After growing up in Switzerland, 13-year-old Marta returns to a city in southern Italy with her mother and older sister. Independent and inquisitive, she joins a catechism class at a local church. However, the games and religious pop songs she encounters there do not nearly satisfy her interest in faith. Struggling to find her place, Marta pushes the boundaries of the class, the priest, and the church.

Ten minutes a day can change the course of your day. Ten minutes doing something completely new can change the course of a life. This is what Bianca will discover in the midst of an existential crisis. New meetings, the discovery of special bonds and listening to those who have always loved us. Sometimes it doesn't take much to start over and this film teaches us this, through a warm and passionate story of rebirth.

A coming-of-age tale about three 18-year-olds just out of high school who go to a Greek island following one of the boys' older girlfriend.

An aimless college graduate jumping from one job interview to another — killing time in between with his wisecracking and deadbeat room-mate — falls in love with an actress.

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.

To find his therapy dog, a 17-year-old escapes from juvie and embarks on a journey of reconnection with his brother and grandmother through Cantabria.

Teenage problems intertwine during the occupation of a high school in Rome. Silvio—much like his peers desperate to lose his virginity—wants to make his move on the girl he likes, despite her being already his friend's girlfriend and not knowing that her best friend harbors feelings for him—while clashing also with his parents, onetime Sixties radicals who look down on the kids' aimless political commitment.

A 17 year old finds out that his girlfriend is dying, so he sets out to give her an entire life, in the last year she has left.

20-year-old Margaux makes the acquaintance of 45-year-old Margaux: they have a lot in common – so much so that it turns out they are one and the same person, at two different ages and stages of their life…

Claudia and Flavio were once passionately in love, but all of that is over. Now, in their fifties, they must venture anew into the world of love and dating once more but for Claudia confronting the end and accepting a new beginning isn’t so easy. Claudia is unwilling to let go and forget the life she’s built with Flavio, while Flavio, eager to move on, soon finds himself in a relationship with a much younger woman. Claudia soon reconnects with Nina, a student from her days as a professor.

Tommy, 11 years old, is on the road again with her eccentric parents. This time, her freshly out-of-jail father has promised her: she won't miss the first school-day of the term! That was before her dad stole a sports car, her mother disappeared and an astronaut popped by.

After 29-year-old Adaline recovers from a nearly lethal accident, she inexplicably stops growing older. As the years stretch on and on, Adaline keeps her secret to herself until she meets a man who changes her life.

Henri is a middle-aged writer with fading inspiration who has published nothing worthy of note in years. Feeling increasingly misunderstood by his wife and four grown up deadbeat kids, he dreams of running away to start over again. Yet when he discovers an unattractive, bad-mannered dog in his garden, he decides to adopt him and both start developing an unexpected friendship that inevitably upsets Henri’s family and neighbors.

Twenty-year-old Matsuri Takabayashi learns that she only has ten years to live due to an incurable disease. She decides to not dwell on her life and not to fall in love—until she meets a man named Kazuto Manabe at a school reunion.

Michele, Goffredo, Mirko and Vito are four friends who have participated in the battles of the student in Sixties. Now in the Seventies, the four friends don't know what to do, though young and with so many possibilities to find a job in life. Intellectuals marginalized and misunderstood, the four friends find themselves when they can in a restaurant to discuss their outlandish theories. A girl named Olga disrupts their life, but Michele is her favorite, although he does not know what to do with the girl.

Like all sixteen-year-olds, Leo prefers the company of friends, motorbike rides and music to school. None of the teachers seem to be able to arouse his interest until the arrival in his class of a young history and philosophy substitute who, with his modern methods, helps him see the world with different eyes. In love with Beatrice, the ethereal girl of his dreams, Leo divides the world by colours. Beatrice is the red of love but he is forced to confront his own beliefs and fears when he discovers that the girl is suffering from leukemia, a disease that he links to white, a symbol of emptiness and loss.

The world is closing in on Greta Driscoll. On the cusp of turning fifteen she can't bear to leave her childhood, it contains all the things that give her comfort in this incomprehensible new world. She floats in a bubble of loserdom with her only friend Elliott, until her parents throw her a surprise 15th birthday party and she's flung into a parallel place; a world that's weirdly erotic, a little bit violent and thoroughly ludicrous - only there can she find herself.

Childhood pals Dog and Mirales live in a little village in the south of France and spend their days just hanging out. To kill time, Mirales has got into the habit of teasing Dog mercilessly. But this summer is different: Dog meets Elsa and romance blossoms.

A 27-year-old suburban slacker entertains daily conversations bordering on paradoxical with his conscience, which manifests itself in the form of a human-sized armadillo. Based on the best-selling graphic novel by Zerocalcare.

Dante accidentally kisses Alice and they get engaged. After a surprise party for his 40th birthday, he wakes up a year later, not remembering what happened. Not only does he discover that Alice is pregnant... He feels time is passing too quickly and he starts forgetting some of the most important moments of his life.

Paris, 1977. Eleven year old Stella knows poker better than grammar when she starts the year at a prestigious new school. There, she discovers the possibilities of a whole new world outside her parents' bar.

The puppy love of two teenagers is set against a backdrop of adults struggling with their own lives. As a couple in love, they don't care about anything but themselves and seem totally unaware about everything that surrounds them.

Six high school friends in their 40s who haven't seen each other in nearly 20 years rekindle their younger selves after a court cancels their diploma, forcing them to repeat the final high school exam.

Prevented from using mobile phones due to the non-existent reception of the location, a school trip to a rural town becomes a life-changing experience of friendship and love for a group of Italian kids and their teacher.

A young couple bound by a seemingly ideal love, begins to unravel as unexpected opportunities spin them down a volatile and violent path and threaten the future they had always imagined.

Jon Katz is close to burnout. He's a writer with writer's block; his wife has left for her sister's because he's emotionally distant; he rarely answers his phone. A kennel sends him a border collie that's undisciplined because of abuse. Despite a series of mishaps, Jon decides to keep trying with the dog, and he rents a dilapidated farm house to give the dog room to run. A local handyman refers Jon to a woman who might be able to help him train the dog. Reluctantly, Jon gives her a try. Is the dog the problem, or the owner?

When theatre actor Giuliano receives an unexpected visit from his childhood friend Tommasso, the encounter is bittersweet. This reunion is their first meeting in many years, triggered by Giuliano’s failing health and his decision to forgo treatment. Instead he is focussed on putting his affairs in order: distributing possessions, reconciling past disputes, and, most importantly, finding a home for his beloved canine, Pato. Over four days, the two men walk the streets of Rome, visiting bookshops, restaurants, veterinarians and friends, examining their lives and speculating on what the future holds.

When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.

Giovanna, Carla, Francesca, Chiara. What these women have in common so different from each other? Which will never be the not insignificant detail that makes their lives secretly imperfect? And what mystery female is so intimate and private, that more private you can not? Whatever it is, all they want. A food designer, her first love and one sciampista for dogs are the stars of this comedy merrily shameless telling women what no one had ever dared to tell.

Drifting through his gap year with its internships and travel plans, Jack has always suspected there was more to life than this. A chance encounter with the beautiful and ethereal Evelyn swerves his life radically off course.

With only a year left to live, 17-year-old Akito finds new meaning in life by bringing joy to a terminally ill girl who has just six months remaining.

Loredana is a schoolgirl who takes advantage of her fellow students and teachers by using her innocent schoolgirl beauty. After she loses her virginity to an older man she soon realizes there are more important things to life than teasing men.

Lia and Tina are two beautiful girls who meet and realize that they have a lot in common. They are both young, beautiful and pissed off, so they decide to hitchhike their way to Rome to find Nazariota's commune, a place to stay for free and have all the sex they want... or so they think. Things don't go as they have planned though, and soon they become involved in prostitution, the police and an aggressive gang.

When Debora's ex-husband, a popular neomelodic singer, loses his life in a stage dive, she worries that her 11-year-old son Ciro may be showing symptoms of depression. Taken to a child psychologist, shy Tommaso, Ciro eventually confesses to him that it's not his father's death that has got him down, it's love for his classmate, the cute Ludovica. The two make a deal: Tommaso will help Ciro to win the affections of Ludovica, while Ciro will give Tommaso a hand at having a chance with his mother.

Terri, a pajama-clad, disaffected high school student learns how to engage the world with the help of Mr. Fitzgerald, his assistant principal.

After the death of her mother, 17-year-old Prudence finds herself living alone in her Paris apartment. Then she meets Maryline, a rebel of her own age, who introduces her to the thrills of motorcycle racing on the biker circuit at Rungis. Prudence’s newfound lease of freedom becomes complicated when she falls for a boy Franck who wastes no time in taking advantage of her naivety...

Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.

Two outsiders, both shaped by the circumstances that have brought them together, forge a deep and lasting love.

A long love story, seen through the memories of one young couple. The journey through the years of two individuals, united, divided, happy, unhappy, deeply in love, or in love with others, in a single stream of emotions and shades of feeling. Over the course of the film, he learns that love can indeed last, while she learns to live with nostalgia.

15-year-old Mia faces an overwhelming transformation which puts her entire existence into question. Her body is changing radically, and despite desperate attempts to halt the process, Mia is soon forced to accept that nature is far more powerful than she is.

Éric and Patrice have been friends since high school. Over the years, they have both taken very different paths: Éric has become a hedonist, has a string of girlfriends and is always on the look out for a new one; Patrice has become a monogamous father with a very ordered life. After a drunken evening, the two childhood friends find themselves cast back into 1986, when they were 17 years old. This return to the past is a dream opportunity to try to change the path their lives will take. What will they do with this second chance?

Samuele is 16 and has a passion for skateboarding. He has big dreams: going to university, move to California, and travel, but things change when he meets Alice, who could be the girl of his life.

Irene lives in Rome. When her mother ask to, she go back to Rimini, her hometown, to take care of her autistic brother, Omar. She soon discover that Omar knows very well what to expect from the future, but in order to achieve his dreams, he need to be independent, which is why Irene begins a tender crash course to teach him adult life.

Andrea is a handsome and cocky 38-year old man with a successful business career. Shallow, womanizing and a confirmed bachelor, his life seems to be just perfect... until the day he comes home and finds there Layla, a teenage girl who claims to be his daughter. Alongside Layla is her grandfather Enzo, a former rockstar and the father of Andrea's first fleeting and forgotten conquest. And they've come to stay!

The chronicles of four years in the life of Julie, a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is.

Paris 2052. Julia, 80 years old, had a fulfilled life. On her birthday, she reflects on the decisions and circumstances that could have led her on different paths. From the age of 17 to this day, her life was full of small but critical moments. Each was a turning point with dramatic consequences. What would have happened if she had forgotten her passport, chosen a different line at the store, driven the scooter this one time...? Is her life a succession of coincidences and accidents or a ready-made path?

Alex, a high-school boy fond of rock and punk music, falls in love with Adelaide, who shares his feelings but doesn't want to get too involved because she will soon leave for studying in America. Alex gets relief in music and his friend Martino who leads what looks to him as a more complete life.

Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.

How much do we really know about ourselves when we make a decision? What if there are multiple versions of our I within us, each with something to say?

An imaginative 15-year-old is stubbornly determined to lose her virginity despite the pathetic pickings in the outskirts of Houston in the early '90s.

In Italy, three men fall in love with three women. First a young engaged lawyer has a fling, then the middle-aged married man has a fling, then a retired man falls in love with his friend's daughter.

Lucia is a young and talented advertiser but is out of luck when it comes to love. Madly in love with her best friend's boyfriend, she struggles with her feelings when they are set to get married.

A 37-year-old woman wakes up from a 22-year coma, and returns to the high school where she was once a popular cheerleader to finish her senior year and become prom queen.

Valeria has just moved to Madrid after her parent's separation. What at first seems a bad start for her new life becomes the beginning of an amazing life experience. New friendships, a city full of possibilities, first love...

An absurd law prevents John, an unrecognized child at birth, from knowing the identity of his biological parents before his 100th birthday. To succeed in attracting public opinion, his only hope is to obtain the complicity of Gustavo, the only unrecognized-at-birth centenarian alive. The only one who would have the right to avail himself of this legislation but seems to have no interest in doing so. The Most Beautiful Century of My Life tells of the meeting between a centenarian projected into the future and a young man anchored in the past and of their unexpected friendship.

After surviving a car accident that took the life of her boyfriend, a teenage girl believes he's attempting to reconnect with her from the after world.

At the end of the 1980s, Stella, Victor, Adèle and Etienne are 20 years old. They take the entrance exam to the famous acting school created by Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Romans at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre. Launched at full speed into life, passion, and love, together they will experience the turning point of their lives, but also their first tragedy.

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.

Ferro and Cate, two kids trying to get to grips with an unplanned pregnancy, their families (rebellious Ferro’s hospitable, ‘normal’ family, and level-headed Cate’s unhinged, atypical one), exams at school, friends and a general lack of jobs.

Ten-year-old Laure isn't like most girls. She prefers football to dolls and sweaters to dresses. When Laure and her family move to a new neighbourhood, local girl Lisa mistakes Laure for a boy. Indulging in this exciting new identity, Laure becomes Mickaël, and so begins a summer of long sunny afternoons, playground games and first kisses. Yet with the school term fast approaching, and with suspicions arising amongst friends and family, Laure must face up to an uncertain future.

On her 40th birthday, Amelia makes a fateful wish to be 18 again back in 2002 but soon regrets it when she's stuck reliving the day over and over again.

Workaholic Thomas Johnson dies in an auto accident and reincarnates as a dog. Remembering some of his previous being, he returns to his wife and son to protect them from the man who caused his accident. But, as time goes by, his memories return, and Thomas realizes he wasn't such a good husband and father.

As a child, Jack believed the tender lie his parents told him, that Gio was a special being with superpowers, as in a comic book. Now that he is about to go to high school, however, Jack no longer believes that his brother is a superhero, in fact, he is almost ashamed of him, especially since he met Arianna, the first love of his life.

They’re all nuts. Her parents, who want to send her off to boarding school. Her new teacher, who expects her to read impossibly old books. Her fellow band members, who make her sing ridiculous lyrics and dress her up in a frilly white dress for their first show. Everyone seems to know what she should do and how she should act. And it’s not like 13-year-old Aurore has any fundamental problem with changing herself either. Who would want to be like this: unhappy, ugly and emotionally withdrawn? But the others don’t seem all that much happier to her either. She definitely doesn’t ever want to be as old, rundown and lonely as her mother. And so she prefers to stay the way she is, to observe and make her biting comments on whatever comes her way.

A man wakes up one morning with an annoying ringing sound in his ears. A note on the fridge says: "Your friend Luigi has died. P.S. I took the car". The problem is that he does not even remember who this guy Luigi is. This is just the beginning of a tragicomic day during which he will be plunged into the folly of the world. One of those days that changes your life forever.

A group of former high school classmates meets for a reunion 15 years after graduation, only to discover that any innocence or friendship is long lost.

Gilberto, 50enne, si fa coinvolgere in una cosiddetta speed-date, una gara in cui i protagonisti devono trovare un partner in 3 minuti. Arrestato, deve confessare tutto in presenza della moglie che lo sbatte fuori di casa. Rifugiatosi da amici scopre che il suo migliore amico è amante della moglie e comincia a tentare di avviare nuove relazioni che falliscono tutte.

Sutter, a popular party animal, unexpectedly meets the introverted Aimee after waking up on a stranger's lawn. As Sutter deals with the problems in his life and Aimee plans for her future beyond school, an unexpected romance blossoms between them.

Lina is about to graduate high school and has her sights set on her future at MIT. But when her mom gets sick, she encourages Lina to follow in her footsteps and have “the summer of a lifetime” in Rome. Using her mom’s old diary as a guide, she explores the romantic and magical city, where she just might find love... and gelato, of course.

A commitment-phobic 27-year old’s relationship is put to the test when she and her boyfriend attend 7 weddings in the same year.

Cal Weaver is living the American dream. He has a good job, a beautiful house, great children and a beautiful wife, named Emily. Cal's seemingly perfect life unravels, however, when he learns that Emily has been unfaithful and wants a divorce. Over 40 and suddenly single, Cal is adrift in the fickle world of dating. Enter, Jacob Palmer, a self-styled player who takes Cal under his wing and teaches him how to be a hit with the ladies.

A case of mistaken identity results in unexpected romance when the most popular girl in high school and the biggest loser must come together to win over their crushes.

Seven thirty-something friends organise a post-grad trip they were never able to take after school. They find new adventures on a Greek island, and show that true maturity is never really achieved.

In the film, Solo is a down-on-his-luck writer who is encouraged by his psychiatrist to get a dog. Solo meets his love interest, who he assumes to be a dog owner when meeting her at a dog play park, but dog problems stand in their way.


