The Short History of the Long RoadMovies like The Short History of the Long Road
- Key Features:
- Coming-of-age, Grief, Road trip, Father-daughter relationship, Nomadic lifestyle, Survival, Self-discovery, Loss, Resilience, Independent film, Family drama, Personal journey, Overcoming adversity, Finding home, Emotional growth
- Tone:
- earnest, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Independent film viewers, Drama enthusiasts, Coming-of-age fans, Those interested in family stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Loss → Hope
The Short History of the Long Road

Nola grew up living on a van with her father, Clint; two nomads against the world. When tragedy strikes, Nola must confront the reality of life on the road alone, learning to own her grief, her past and her new destination.
The Short History of the Long Road
Tess enlists her biological father – a lovable slacker from the wrong side of the tracks – and the charming juvenile delinquent next door to help her come to grips with the death of her little sister.

Two guys serendipitously meet at a time when they both find themselves at personal crossroads and decide to embark on an unplanned road trip across the American Southwest.

West Texas, in the 1960's. A tale of two 12-year-olds who embark on an adventure to find new parents in order to escape their unhappy and emotionally unsatisfying family life.

After eight years apart, three childhood friends - Lucy, Kit, and Mimi - rediscover their friendship on a cross-country trip. With barely a plan, practically no money but plenty of dreams, the girls catch a lift with Mimi's handsome friend Ben in his convertible. Along the way they not only gather experiences that will change their lives, but they also discover how important it is to hold onto their hearts' desires.

Follows a young boy who runs away from home in the search of his estranged mother.

A woman in her sixties embarks on a journey through the western United States after losing everything in the Great Recession, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.

A young man with Tourette's Syndrome embarks on a road trip with his recently-deceased mother's ashes.

Following the death of their friend, two girls in their late twenties embark on a road trip to spread his ashes. Seph and Alex take turns driving. Dan is in the glove compartment, in tupperware, decreasing in volume as the trip progresses.

Abandoned by her father, a young woman embarks on a thousand-mile odyssey through the backroads of America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But despite their best efforts, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether their love can survive their otherness.

A young girl tries to help her grandfather, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, navigate his increasing forgetfulness, and ends up going on a remarkable adventure with him.

Self-described misanthrope Elle Reid has her protective bubble burst when her 18-year-old granddaughter, Sage, shows up needing help. The two of them go on a day-long journey that causes Elle to come to terms with her past and Sage to confront her future.

Sal Paradise is a young writer whose life is shaken and ultimately redefined by the arrival of Dean Moriarty, a free-spirited, fearless, fast talking Westerner and his girl, Marylou. Traveling cross-country, Sal and Dean venture out on a personal quest for freedom from the conformity and conservatism engulfing them in search of the unknown, themselves, and the pursuit of “it” -- the pure essence of experience.

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 terminally ill man and his teenage daughter embark on a road trip from California to New Orleans for his 20th college reunion. While there, he secretly hopes she can reunite with the mother who left them long ago.

Lamb, based on the novel by Bonnie Nadzam, traces the self-discovery of David Lamb in the weeks following the disintegration of his marriage and the death of his father. Hoping to regain some faith in his own goodness, he turns his attention to Tommie, an awkward and unpopular eleven-year-old girl. Lamb is convinced that he can help her avoid a destiny of apathy and emptiness, and takes Tommie for a road trip from Chicago to the Rockies, planning to initiate her into the beauty of the mountain wilderness. The journey shakes them in ways neither expects.

As single mom Grace juggles work, bills, and her affair with a married doctor, her daughter, Ansiedad, plots a shortcut to adulthood after finding inspiration in the coming-of-age stories she's reading for school.

An adventurous love story between two young women of different social and economic backgrounds who find themselves going through all the typical struggles of a new romance.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind and water. It is cold enough to crack stones and, when the snow falls, it is gray. Their destination is the warmer south, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there.

The film follows 24 hours in the life of father and daughter Leo and Molly, as they weave their way around New York City, until their ordinary but stressful day takes on a hallucinatory and epic quality.

In New York City, Thom is broke and jobless, illegally working as a taxi driver. Claire is a successful business-woman, but personally she's in shambles - then comes the phone call that her estranged father is in the hospital. Not knowing what to do, Claire hops in Thom's cab and orders him to just drive and so he does. They find themselves in Pennsylvania and Claire makes the rash decision to drive across the country to California. On the road, there are many detours as the obstacles and secrets force them to learn about themselves and each other.

The story of a young mother who loses her husband in Afghanistan and struggles to raise their young daughter in his absence.

A teenage boy and girl discover a renewed sense of possibility as they go on a road trip to photograph lighthouses along the California coast.

Single mom Laura, along with her awkward 14 year-old son Henry is forced to drive Jack, her estranged, care-free pot dealing father across country after he's kicked out of yet another nursing home.

Faced with the decision of a lifetime, Arvilla Holden enlists her two best friends and sets off in a vintage '66 Bonneville convertible to deliver her late husband's ashes to Santa Barbara.

A transgender woman takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she had a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.

A pistol-packing teen meets an unstable rebel and a cocaine-snorting drifter as she hitchhikes her way out West.

A Heffley family road trip to attend Meemaw's 90th birthday party goes hilariously off course thanks to Greg's newest scheme to get to a video gaming convention.

Recently widowed mom Brenda fights to protect her family during a harrowing road trip when a murder and a missing bag of cash plunge them into danger.

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

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.

After a bad breakup with his girlfriend leaves him heartbroken, Carter Webb moves to Michigan to take care of his ailing grandmother. Once there, he gets mixed up in the lives of the mother and daughters who live across the street.

A beautiful and naive college freshman discovers that her entire life is a lie and sets out on a road trip with a host of misfits to discover herself and the answers she craves.

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.

A mother takes her two sons on an unusual road trip from New York to Pittsburgh, St. Louis and eventually Hollywood in her quest to find a man to take care of them all.

A 17-year old Missouri teen discovers she has gotten pregnant, a development that threatens to end her dreams of matriculating at an Ivy League college, and the career that could follow.

Soon to be a father, Mark feels the pressure of domestic responsibility closing in, so he is more than happy to accept when his old friend Kurt proposes a camping trip in the Oregon wilderness. During their time together, the men come to grips with the changes in their lives and the effect on their relationship.

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

Having a self-absorbed New Age mother and an estranged father has meant 15-year-old Ellis Whitman has grown up relying on an unconventional guardian: a goat-trekking, marijuana-growing sage called 'Goat Man'. When Ellis decides to leave the alternative ways of his desert homestead for a stuffy East Coast prep school, major changes are in store.

A film about growing apart when growing up. Two best friends relationship strains when one deals with her newfound sexuality and the other with breaking up with her long term boyfriend.

Ben Tyler has been diagnosed with cancer. With a grim chance of survival in the best case scenario even if he immediately begins treatment, he instead decides to take a motorcycle trip from Toronto through the Canadian prairies to British Columbia.

When his mother dies, a teenager takes a road-trip in a stolen car to find his long-lost brother. Along the way he discovers a profound connection with the car-owner and with himself as well.

A chaotic family is on a road trip across a rugged landscape. In the back seat, Dad has a broken leg, Mom tries to laugh when she's not holding back tears, and the youngest keeps exploding into car karaoke. Only the older brother is quiet.

Ex-con Russell Gaines is attempting to rebuild his life with the help of his father, Mitchell. However, the arrival of Maben sends his new life into chaos, leading the pair to go on the run - as their violent pasts catch up to them, the pair must learn to trust each other if they hope to live out the rest of their days.

After breaking up with her girlfriend, a nightclub singer, Jane, answers a personal ad from Robin, a real estate agent with AIDS, seeking a cross-country travel partner. On their journey from New York City to Los Angeles, the two stop by Pittsburgh to pick up Jane's friend Holly, who is trying to escape an abusive relationship. With three distinct personalities, the women must overcome their differences to help one another.

In the wake of a school tragedy, Vada, Mia and Quinton form a unique and dynamic bond as they navigate the never linear, often confusing journey to heal in a world that feels forever changed.

An unexpected road trip brings a dysfunctional family together for one last journey with their elder, sparking moments of connection, joy, and reconciliation.

Los Angeles television producer Maggie Baker unwittingly falls for Danny Wise, the son and former producer of his mother’s popular annual Christmas special Julia Wise Lifestyle. When Maggie’s secret plan to reunite Danny and his two brothers with Julia during the live broadcast in Vermont goes awry, Maggie is reminded that above all, it is the love for family and friends that makes the merriest of Christmas.

Nora, a single mother raising two teenage daughters, Shade and Trudi, waits tables at a truck-stop diner in a small New Mexico town. The beautiful and rebellious Trudi drops out of school and gets a job alongside Nora, while the younger Shade whittles away her time at Spanish movie matinees. Their lives are turned upside down when Trudi becomes pregnant and the girls' absent father returns.

Louis, a nine-year-old boy from Paris, spends his summer vacation in a small town in Brittany. His mother Claire has lodged him with her girlfriend Marcelle and her husband Pelo while she's having her second baby. There Louis makes friends with Martine, the ten-year- old girl next door, and learns from her about life.

A young man cares for his younger sisters after their mother is imprisoned for murdering their abusive father. When he strikes up an affair with a married woman, long-dormant family secrets bubble to the surface.

Minor leaguer Carlton Garret takes an unexpected road trip to track down his estranged father, legendary baseball player Kyle Garret when Carlton’s mother becomes sick. Once reunited, Carlton struggles to deal with the series of misadventures caused by his father’s antics. Attempts at bonding come to a head as the mismatched duo make their way from Ohio back home to Houston to reunite the family.

A high school senior drives cross-country with his best friends to hook up with a babe he met online.

Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.

Just when Lola, 18 years old and transgender, learns that she can finally have surgery, her mother, who is her only financial support, passes away. Abiding by her mother’s last wishes, Lola and her father, who are permanently in conflict and have not seen each other for two years, undertake a journey all the way to the Belgian coast. They realize the outcome of the journey may not be the one they were both expecting...

A young woman dealing with anorexia meets an unconventional doctor who challenges her to face her condition and embrace life.

The coming-of-age story of Cayden Richards. Forced to hit the road after the murder of his parents, Cayden wanders lost without purpose... Until he meets a certifiable lunatic named Wild Joe who sets him on a path to the ominous town of Lupine Ridge to hunt down the truths of his history. But in the end| who's really hunting whom?

Two teenage girls travel across the U.S. in 1962, during the chaos of the Cuban missile crisis, in search of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Under small-town scrutiny, a withdrawn farmer’s daughter forges an intimate friendship with a worldly but reckless new girl in 1960s Oklahoma.

Pressured by his late mother's ghost to return home to the family he abandoned, a former addict grabs a bag of pills and a sack of marijuana and hits the road to Shreveport.

When her boyfriend is arrested for marijuana possession, Joleen Reedy and her 11-year-old daughter, Tara, take refuge with Joleen's aimless brother, James. Joleen soon runs off with a truck driver, and James is unable to meet his responsibilities. After Child Protective Services takes possession of Tara, James abducts her from a foster home, and the two travel from California to Utah, where his abusive father lives.

Two siblings who haven't seen each other in 15 years mend their relationship while fulfilling a childhood dream: a motorcycle road trip through Mexico.

After her mother's death, six-year-old Frida is sent to her uncle's family to live with them in the countryside. But Frida finds it hard to forget her mother and adapt to her new life.

In the Old West, a 17-year-old Scottish boy teams up with a mysterious gunman to find the woman with whom he is infatuated.

Caleb, a South Florida teen, loves his camera, his weed and his grandmother. On the eve of his high school graduation, everything changes when he's exposed to HIV. While he waits three months for his results, Caleb finds love in the most unlikely of places.

An army ranger and his dog embark on a road trip along the Pacific Coast Highway to attend a friend's funeral.

Alejandra and her dad Roberto have just moved to town. She is new at school, he has a new job. Starting over is sometimes complicated when you have left so much behind.

When Danielle is banished to special education because of her misbehavior, she joins Clarke on a road trip to discover themselves.

Simon Birch and Joe Wenteworth are boys who have a reputation for being oddballs. Joe never knew his father, and his mother, Rebecca, is keeping her lips sealed no matter how much he protests. Simon, meanwhile, is an 11-year-old dwarf whose outsize personality belies his small stature. Indeed, he often assails the local reverend with thorny theological questions and joins Joe on his quest to find his biological father.

In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.

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.

Dito Montiel, a successful author, receives a call from his long-suffering mother, asking him to return home and visit his ailing father. Dito recalls his childhood growing up in a violent neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., with friends Antonio, Giuseppe, Nerf and Mike.

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.

Upon hearing his wife was killed in the Iraq war, a father takes his two daughters on a road trip, all the while searching for the right time and place to tell them about their mother's fate.

After the death of his estranged father, professional rainbow-watcher Stefano finds out he has a 13-year-old half-brother, and that he must become his legal guardian to receive the inheritance.

Still mourning the death of her mother a few years back, Alice McKinley finds her life seriously disrupted when her father Ben buys a store and moves her and her older brother Lester to a new town.

A coming-of-age story, adapted from Irv Ruckman's 1984 novel, about a teenager who bonds with his stepfather while the Blainsworth, Nebraska farm family battles a series of killer twisters.

It's the summer before 6th grade, and Clark is the new-in-town biracial kid in a sea of white. Discovering that to be cool he needs to act 'more black,' he fumbles to meet expectations, while his urban intellectual parents Mack and Gina also strive to adjust to small-town living. Equipped for the many inherent challenges of New York, the tight-knit family are ill prepared for the drastically different set of obstacles that their new community presents, and soon find themselves struggling to understand themselves and each other in this new suburban context.

Avinash, a dejected soul stuck in a dead-end job shares a strange relationship with his father. He holds him responsible for crushing his dreams. However, he is left pondering upon this longstanding hatred when he hears of his father’s untimely demise.

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.

Vada Sultenfuss has a holiday coming up, and an assignment: to do and essay on someone she admires and has never met. She decides she wants to do an assignment on her mother, but quickly realises she knows very little about her. She manages to get her father to agree to let her go to LA to stay with her Uncle Phil and do some research on her mother.

On the eve of Y2K, orphaned 12-year-old Beverly discovers a broken mixtape crafted by her teen parents. Raised by her grandmother – who struggles talking about her late daughter – Beverly sees the mixtape as a chance to finally learn more about her parents.

Joe Dirt is a janitor with a mullet hairdo, acid-washed jeans and a dream to find the parents that he lost at the Grand Canyon when he was a belligerent, trailer park-raised eight-year-old. Now, blasting Van Halen in his jacked-up economy car, the irrepressibly optimistic Joe hits the road alone in search of his folks.

Mia and Kyle, two misfit American teens, travel to Spain in search of Mia's birth mother. As the pair road trip through the picturesque cities of Andalusia and fall in love, they discover that the most important question isn't who gave you life, but what you decide to do with it.

Jessica knows exactly what her life is supposed to look like and where it takes her. But then she meets Danny. He has a complicated past and could confuse all their plans. Jessica has to decide.

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.

Teenagers Rose and Bennett were in love, and then a car crash claimed Bennett's life. He left behind a grieving mother, father and younger brother, and Rose was left all alone. She has no family to turn to for support, so when she finds out she's pregnant, she winds up at the Brewer's door. She needs their help, and although they can't quite admit it, they each need her so they can begin to heal.

Neglected by her husband, Sarah embarks on an impromptu road trip with her young daughter and her best friend, Mindy. Along the way, the dynamic between the two friends intensifies before circumstances force them apart. Years later, Sarah attempts to rebuild their intimate connection in the days before Mindy’s wedding.

Two best friends embark on a cross country trip back to their hometown to attempt to win a pageant that eluded them as children.

David Portnoy, a 15-year-old birding fanatic, thinks that he's made the discovery of a lifetime. So, on the eve of his father's remarriage, he escapes on an epic road trip with his best friends to solidify their place in birding history.

Forcibly separated from her twin brother when they are orphaned, a melancholic misfit learns how to find confidence within herself amid the clutter of misfortunes and everyday life.

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.

While her mom is away, a teen sneaks out of the hippie commune where she lives and embarks on a life-changing adventure to discover who her father is.

Stand-up comedian Max Bernal lives with his father Stan while struggling to co-parent his autistic son Ezra with his ex-wife. When forced to confront difficult decisions about their son's future, Max and Ezra embark on a cross-country road trip that has a transcendent impact on both their lives.

Loner Diane Ford is a truck driver with an 11-year-old son, Peter, whom she never sees, and that's fine with her. But, when Peter's father, Len, falls ill, he asks Diane to take care of their son for a while. Eventually, Diane reluctantly agrees, but she quickly realizes that caring for a child interferes with her independent lifestyle - and Peter isn't all that thrilled with the arrangement, either.

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

Finley, a talented aspiring violinist, meets Beckett, a famous young movie star, on the way to her college semester abroad program in a small coastal village in Ireland. An unexpected romance emerges as the heartthrob Beckett leads the uptight Finley on an adventurous reawakening, and she emboldens him to take charge of his future, until the pressures of his stardom get in the way.

Newly widowed Frank Fogle embarks on a journey to Ireland to scatter his late wife’s ashes. His estranged son, Sean, recently released from prison, agrees to join only when his father promises that they’ll never see each other again following the trip. After revelations surface about an old flame of Frank’s wife and a charming hitchhiker with plans of her own intervenes, father and son find themselves drawn together in unexpected ways.

A city teen travels to Montana to go hunting with his estranged father, only for the strained trip to become a battle for survival when they encounter a grizzly bear.

