Garden PartyMovies like Garden Party
- Key Features:
- Coming-of-age, Sexual exploitation, Survival, Dysfunctional family, Teenage angst, Search for identity, Escapism, Talent, Nudity-moderate, Drama, Vulnerability
- Tone:
- gritty, serious
- Target Audience:
- Indie film enthusiasts, Drama lovers, Viewers interested in social issues, Coming-of-age stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Confusion → Desperation → Hope
Garden Party

Are you young, sexually confused, just trying to get by? Do you sing, dance or possess some other talent? Welcome to the Garden Party. At the center of the story is 15-year-old April. She is running from one bad situation into another, hoping to find an answer that doesn't involve taking off her clothes.
Garden Party
A shy student suddenly becomes the center of attention when she wins a huge birthday party that she never asked for.

A young French teenage girl after moving to a new city falls in love with a boy and is thinking of having sex with him because her girlfriends have already done it.

Two 15-year-old girls from different sides of the tracks compete to see who will be first to lose their virginity while at camp.

A thirteen-year-old French girl deals with moving to a new city and school in Paris, while at the same time her parents are getting a divorce.

A teenage girl gets diagnosed with a reproductive condition that upends her plans to have sex and propels her into exploring unusual methods to have a sex life, challenging her relationships with everyone in her life, but most importantly, herself.

A youth group is preparing for what will be the summer of their life, including secrets, lies, sex, confusion, evenings and holidays.

A disaffected Texas teen spends his 16th birthday getting high, hanging out and having casual sex.

Amy, an 11-year-old girl, joins a group of dancers named “the cuties” at school, and rapidly grows aware of her burgeoning femininity—upsetting her mother and her values in the process.

A disconnected teenage girl enters a relationship with a man twice her age. She sees him as the solution to all her problems, but his intentions are not what they seem.

Something terrible is happening in class 3A at Calmecatl Junior High. No one can leave the classroom until the guilty party is found. This is the device that gives us a glimpse of the ethics, games, esthetics and eroticism of these girl-women. It is not easy to say what the subject is, there are so many: the discovery of sexuality, discrimination, chance, drugs, maternity, traditions, betrayals, power, love. A mural of a complex reality from the point of view of twenty-something women in the skin of 14 to 15 year old girls.

After being abducted as children, and suffering years of abuse, a teenage boy and girl find themselves living on the street.

Five teenage girls navigate the twists and turns of their complicated emotional lives, and learn the secrets of the heart through their friendship.

Reluctantly, a sulky adolescent returns to her parents' house for yet another boring summer vacation, dabbling in desire and the art of desirability, eventually mixing reality with vision, caged fantasies with the fierce female sexuality.

A coming-of-age movie that tells a story unfolding in every high school around the country -- a story of kids hiding their true identities in plain sight, even as they feverishly pursue their hearts' desires.

In a deserted rich house, a couple of amphibians explore their surroundings and follow their primal instincts.

Daniela, raised in the bosom of a strict Evangelical family and recently unmasked as a fornicator by her shocked parents, struggles to find her own path to spiritual harmony.

After the death of her husband, the mother of Julie, Jack, Sue and Tom begins to suffer from a mysterious illness. Aware that she is going to have to go into hospital she opens a bank account for the children, so that they can be financially self-sufficient and will be able to avoid being taken into care by the authorities. Unfortunately she also dies and Julie and Jack (the older, teenage children) decide to hide her body in the basement so that they can have free reign of their household. Soon Tom has taken to dressing as a girl whilst Sue has become increasingly reticent, confiding only to her diary, meanwhile Jack and Julie sense an attraction developing for each other. However Julie's new beau, Derek, threatens to unearth the many dark secrets within this family as he becomes increasingly suspicious of Jack.

An unattractive 7th grader struggles to cope with suburban life as the middle child with inattentive parents and bullies at school.

Fifteen-year-old Mia is in a constant state of war with her family and the world around her. When she meets her party-girl mother’s charming new boyfriend Connor, she is amazed to find he returns her attention, and believes he might help her start to make sense of her life.

Rebellious, quick-witted Erica Vandross is a 17-year-old firecracker living with her single mom, Laurie, and her mom's new boyfriend, Bob, in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. When Bob's mentally unbalanced son, Luke, arrives from rehab to live with the family, Erica finds her domestic and personal life overwhelmed. With Luke and her sidekicks Kala and Claudine in tow, Erica acts out by exposing a high school teacher's dark secret.

On the eve of a Kate's 30th birthday, she agrees to let her two lifelong friends, Evie and Charlie, throw her a party. But what's supposed to be a simple celebration becomes a wild who's who of past and present, and things quickly spiral out of control.

Their first week of high school. The biggest party of the year. Mistakes will be made as four teenage boys navigate a night of mayhem and debauchery.

Feeling confined by their small town and overbearing parents, Annie and Jules hatch a scheme of running away. The only issue is, they need the money to get there. Jules suggests the couple try webcam modeling. Although she’s nervous at first, Annie can’t argue when the money starts rolling in. But as the girls soon find out, consequences can blindside you. Sometimes violently.

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

During a scorching summer in a Belgian-Dutch border village, eight teenagers play games of discovery to break the listless monotony. They challenge each other and themselves and pretty soon, their sexual curiosity starts to blur the lines between right and wrong. As innocence is crushed in depraved games and sexual exploitation, the teenagers soon turn into ruthless predators.

A 17-year-old boy buys mini-cameras and displays the footage online at I-see-you.com. The cash rolls in as the site becomes a major hit. Everyone seems to have fun until it all comes crashing down....

An adolescent girl, living with her mother and her grandmother, will have her first sexual experiences in a heavy and excessive way.

Young Kid has been invited to a party at his friend Play's house. But after a fight at school, Kid's father grounds him. None the less, Kid sneaks out when his father falls asleep. But Kid doesn't know that three of the thugs at school have decided to give him a lesson in behavior.

Lonely college freshman Alex has closed himself off from his peers, who all appear to have this whole "college thing" figured out. But everything changes one night when Alex takes a leap and attends a party at Shithouse - a legendary party fraternity - where he forges a strong connection with Maggie.

A group of teenagers spend the night in a furniture shop for a graduation party. When one of them talks her boyfriend into a game of hide-and-seek, a psycho killer starts hunting them down one by one.

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.

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

Helen is a nonconformist teenage girl who maintains a conflictual relationship with her parents. Hanging out most of her time with her friend Corinna, with whom she breaks one social taboo after another, she uses sex as a way to rebel and break the conventional bourgeois ethic. After an intimate shaving accident, Helen ends up in the hospital where it doesn’t take long before she makes waves. But there she finds Robin, a male nurse who will sweep her off her feet...

Although Mary has little income, she still finds ways to spend her nights at clubs. After being arrested for throwing an illegal rave, she asks her aunt Judy for bail money. Judy then finds Mary a job at her library so that Mary can repay her. Initially, Mary finds the job as a clerk boring and stifling, and prefers to get to know a street food vendor whom she likes. However, Mary must refocus her life once she loses her job and apartment.

In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.

Various individuals think they’re coming together for a party in a private home, but a series of revelations results in a huge crisis that throws their belief systems – and their values – into total disarray.

A gritty coming of age thriller about a young girl sent to juvenile prison for the murder of her abusive step father. The film follows Anna Nix's journey into the dark world of an all girls jail where she discovers complex relationships, drugs, mental illness and her eventual search for redemption.

The Wild Chicks are slowly growing out of their youthful gang years and have to face the worries of growing up on the sidelines of a big class trip before graduation.

Lis is a teenager whose dream is to become a circus artist and leave her hometown, even if she knows that to do it she’ll have to fight her side against her parents. It’s summer and she spends her days playing with her friends and flirting with her boyfriend, a few years older than herself. The lack of privacy and the neighbours’ gossip force Lis to keep their relationship secret so that her parents won’t find out. A relationship which change her live forever.

Young Felicity lives in a monastic school. The only way to live out her sexual fantasies is together with her girlfriend Jenny. But then she receives an invitation to her sister in Hong-Kong and can't wait to finally do the real thing.

As a fan of Albert Camus and Jean-Luc Godard, teenage Nick Twisp is definitely out of his element when his mother and her boyfriend move the family to a trailer park. When a pretty neighbor named Sheeni plays records by French crooners, it's love at first sight for frustrated and inexperienced Nick. Learning that she is dating someone, Nick launches a hilarious quest to find his way into Sheeni's heart -- and bed.

An unassuming high schooler finds himself inexplicably drawn to the free-spirited new girl, whose unconventional ways change how they see themselves…and their world.

To help her financially struggling mother, a teenage girl turns to escorting and meets a wealthy man who makes a proposal she can't refuse.

A day in the life of a group of teens as they travel around New York City skating, drinking, smoking and deflowering virgins.

Three high school seniors throw a party to make a name for themselves. As the night progresses, things spiral out of control as word of the party spreads.

Sue, Cheryl and Lexi are three college freshmen who have been best friends since they were born on the same day. They do something special every year for their birthday, but on their eighteenth, they set out to lose their virginity.

In a bleak Inverness midwinter, Luisaidh is careening off the rails after the suicide of her best friend. She medicates her misery with joyless sex, chips and a belief in the power of positive drinking. Surrounded by bittersweet memories, she struggles to find someone to talk to or some reason to make life worthwhile at the most stressful time of the year.

The adventures of three teenage girls - Inken, Vicky and Lena - and their quest to have their first orgasm.

Overeducated and underemployed, 28 year old Megan is in the throes of a quarterlife crisis. Squarely into adulthood with no career prospects, no particular motivation to think about her future and no one to relate to, Megan is comfortable lagging a few steps behind - while her friends check off milestones and celebrate their new grown-up status. When her high-school sweetheart proposes, Megan panics and- given an unexpected opportunity to escape for a week - hides out in the home of her new friend, 16-year old Annika and Annika's world-weary single dad Craig.

Isolated on a remote property, 16-year-old Claudia finds her world transformed when a spirited girl named Grace wanders into her garden.

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

Cerise is fourteen years old but she looks twenty. Cerise grew up on the outskirts, but now she's exiled to Ukraine. Cerise wears excessive amounts of makeup, but she still has a little girl's dreams. Cerise doesn't know her father, even though she's going to have to live with him. Cerise has only ever thought about herself and now she finds herself in the middle of a revolution.

A young Arab-American girl struggles with her sexual obsession, a bigoted Army reservist, and her strict father during the Gulf War.

Outside, the first sun rays break the dawn. Sixteen years old Catarina can't fall asleep. Inconsequently, in the big city adults are moved by desire... Catarina found she is HIV positive. She wants to drag everyone else along.

Alex, an intersexed 15-year-old, is living as a girl, but she and her family begin to wonder whether she's emotionally a boy when another teenager's sexual advances bring the issue to a head. As Alex faces a final decision regarding her gender, she meets both hostility and compassion.

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

Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.

Fourteen-year-old Mackenzie is sent to live with her uncle in Juneau when her mother can’t care for her anymore. The living situation quickly takes a turn for the worse, and she runs away to rejoin her mother in Seattle. While on her dangerous journey of sleeping in cars and breaking into hotel rooms, she’s drawn to Rene, a lonesome backpacker looking for tranquility in the wilderness.

Teenagers Charly and Paula worry that sex could ruin their friendship, while their suddenly and surprisingly bossy private parts urge them to go for it.

Summer, New York City. A college girl falls hard for a guy she just met. After a night of partying goes wrong, she goes to wild extremes to get him back.

An aimless adolescent joins several itinerant misfits who live on the fringe of society and welcome at-risk youths into their fold.

Girl Lost tackles the issue of underage prostitution as told through the eyes of a wayward teen. Groomed by her own mother to work in the underbelly of Los Angeles, the young girl struggles to survive in this dark world.

The story of Bea Johnson from birth to graduation as she navigates life with an intellectually disabled parent and an extended family who can't quite agree on the best way to help.

At a high-school party, four friends find that losing their collective virginity isn't as easy as they had thought. But they still believe that they need to do so before college. To motivate themselves, they enter a pact to all "score" by their senior prom.

Set during a long, hot summer on the Thamesmead Estate in Southeast London, where three teenagers edge towards adulthood.

Alice, a young innocent Catholic girl, is tempted into masturbating after an AOL chat suddenly turns sexual, however is conflicted as the act would be considered a sin.

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.

Biarritz. Sixteen-year-old George, the high school hottie, falls in love with Alex. To get his attention, she initiates a group game with Alex, Nikita, Laetitia and Gabriel. They will discover, test, and push the limits of their sexuality.

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.

Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend.

In 1990s Los Angeles, a 13-year-old spends his summer navigating between a troubled home life and a crew of new friends he meets at a skate shop.

Two co-dependent high school seniors are forced to deal with separation anxiety after their plan to stage a booze-soaked party goes awry.

14-year-old Lila spends a languid South Brooklyn summer playing third wheel to her promiscuous friend Chiara and Chiara’s boyfriend Patrick. Eager for her own sexual awakening, Lila gamely decides to pursue the older, thuggish Sammy, rumored to sleep with anyone.

A creative and driven teenager is desperate to escape his hometown and the haunting memories of his turbulent childhood.

Based on a true story, 15 year old Tina Spangler discovers she is pregnant. Her choices are abortion, adoption, or a lonely, exhausting life as a single parent. Abandoned by her boyfriend, she turns to her mother. Tina discovers although it has torn her world apart, her pregnancy could re-unite her shattered family and help her find her true purpose in life.

A teenager who's lived a sheltered life because she's allergic to everything, falls for the boy who moves in next door.

Jasna, a beautiful teenager, leads a crude life in post-war Serbia. She goes on a spree of sex, drugs and partying until she finds love and tenderness in a harsh environment.

At the age of 14 the world around you changes at a dizzying speed. But what if actually it's you that changing? What if these changes take you away from what up until now, has been your world? Ibrahim and Rafa are going to suffer these changes for themselves, experiencing first love in a way they never could have imagined. And having to keep it Hidden away.

Forced to move to a boring backwater town, a teenager embarks on affairs with a teacher and a stoner classmate.

Teenage delinquents who are living in an island youth center wake up to find themselves alone with no one to watch over them. After much partying, they realize the island has been deserted and the adults have been infected by a mysterious epidemic.

Sugihara, a Japanese-born, third-generation Korean teenager struggles to find a place in a society that will not accept him.

Because of the actions of her irresponsible parents, a young girl is left alone on a decrepit country estate and survives inside her fantastic imagination.

Two teenage friends spend their summer break preparing for the sexual conquests they hope to experience. That is, until one of the boys is visited by his older, more sexually aggressive cousin, Azucena. Ushering her naïve cousin into the world of sex could take more work than Azucena realized.

A group of disillusioned outsiders abandon modern society in search of a new beginning. Settling on a remote, uninhabited island, their utopian dream quickly unravels as they discover that the greatest threat isn’t the brutal climate or deadly wildlife, but each other.

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.

A wealthy Los Angeles teen and her superficial friends wants to break out of suburbia and experience Southern California's "gangsta" lifestyle. But problems arise when the preppies get in over their heads and provoke the wrath of a violent Latino gang. Suddenly, their role-playing seems a little too real.

Sent from Seoul to serve in a remote coastal village, a policewoman gets involved in the life of a mysterious teenage girl who is abused by both her father and her grandmother.

Andrew returns to his hometown for the funeral of his mother, a journey that reconnects him with past friends. The trip coincides with his decision to stop taking his powerful antidepressants. A chance meeting with Sam - a girl also suffering from various maladies - opens up the possibility of rekindling emotional attachments, confronting his psychologist father, and perhaps beginning a new life.

Unfolding over the course of one very eventful day in his life, at 17-year-old preacher’s kid Henry's afternoon birthday pool party, the guests include an assortment of grown-ups from the family church, as well as Henry’s secular and religious teen friends — including the closeted young Logan, who clearly has eyes for Henry.

Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday—drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives.

On the outskirts of Brooklyn, Frankie, an aimless teenager, suffocates under the oppressive glare cast by his family and a toxic group of delinquent friends. Struggling with his own identity, Frankie begins to scour hookup sites for older men.

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.

Four best friends negotiate loss and major life changes during the last two weeks of high school.

Teenagers Luke, Malachy, and Michelle embark on a wild weekend of drink, drugs, shop-lifting and stealing cars. But what starts out as a game turns deadly serious when the three discover that they can't get off the wild ride they've set in motion.

With their teen hormones raging, three high school boys help one another explore their curiosity about the opposite sex and love in this raunchy comedy.

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.



