The Tribes of Palos VerdesMovies like The Tribes of Palos Verdes
- Key Features:
- Dysfunctional family, Coming-of-age, Surfing, Family drama, Relocation, Marital breakdown, Mental health, Sibling relationship, Suburban life, Personal struggle, Self-discovery, Escapism, Teenage angst
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Drama viewers, Coming-of-age enthusiasts, Viewers interested in family dynamics, Fans of independent film
- Emotional Arc:
- Anxiety → Hope
The Tribes of Palos Verdes

When the situation at her idyllic Palos Verdes home turns volatile, young Medina attempts to surf her way to happiness.
The Tribes of Palos Verdes
A lack of parental guidance encourages teens in an affluent California town to rebel with substance abuse and casual sex.

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.

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 teen-age girl and her father come to an island on Hawaii, they find a closer relationship to each other and think about changing the island. During her adventures, Sydney finds friends, a new hobby with her fantastic photography, and the truth about her mother.

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.

A controlling father’s attempts to ensure that his two children succeed in high school backfire after his son experiences a career-ending sports injury. Their familial bonds are eventually placed under severe strain by an unexpected 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.

Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.

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

Shaun Brumder is a local surfer kid from Orange County who dreams of going to Stanford to become a writer and to get away from his dysfunctional family household. Except Shaun runs into one complication after another, starting when his application is rejected after his dim-witted guidance counselor sends in the wrong form.

Marion is about to divorce from her husband and takes her 15-year-old niece, Pauline, on a vacation to Granville. There, she meets an old love...

Eighteen-year-old Penny Cooper spent years pining for heartthrob surfer Johnny Sanders Jr. before his father’s tragic death brought them closer together. But now high school is over, and when mysterious country musician Ash Baker shows up on the beach, Penny is torn.

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.

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.

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.

A Hawaiian teenage surfer shows off his skills when he takes to the snow slopes in Vermont.

Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.

There are dysfunctional families... and then there are the Conways. After a family tragedy, 15-year-old Billy Conway has become the de facto glue between his bitter mom, distant brother, and stoic dad. But when Billy starts to act out, everything changes for him and his family

A regular guy struggles with a repressive home and professional life, as well as making amends for the trouble his free-spirited brother and sister cause about town.

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

Things go from bad to worse when four co-workers decide to enjoy the extended holiday at a beach house with their families.

Four sisters work together to raise rent money after learning they have to move to another neighborhood in this coming-of-age drama based on the series.

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.

As a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), Ruby is the only hearing person in her deaf family. When the family's fishing business is threatened, Ruby finds herself torn between pursuing her love of music and her fear of abandoning her parents.

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 wave twisting tale of a soul searching surfer experiencing an existential crisis.

Two high school girls are best friends until one dates the other's older brother, who is totally his sister's nemesis.

Manny, Joel and Jonah tear their way through childhood and push against the volatile love of their parents. As Manny and Joel grow into versions of their father and Ma dreams of escape, Jonah, the youngest, embraces an imagined world all his own.

With his wife Elizabeth on life support after a boating accident, Hawaiian land baron Matt King takes his daughters on a trip from Oahu to Kauai to confront a young real estate broker, who was having an affair with Elizabeth before her misfortune.

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.

Ramona is a little girl with a very big imagination and a nose for mischief. Her playful antics keep everyone in her loving family on their toes, including her older sister Beezus, who's just trying to survive her first year of high school. Through all the ups and downs of childhood, Ramona and Beezus learn that anything's possible when you believe in yourself and rely on each other.

In 1976, a lower-middle-class teenager struggles to cope living with her neurotic family of nomads on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.

Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach works dead-end jobs to support his sister and her son. Questioning his life, he paints, surfs and hangs out with his best friend, Gabe. When Gabe's older brother returns home for the summer, Zach suddenly finds himself drawn into a relationship he didn't expect.

Traces over three generations an immigrant family's trials, tribulations, tragedies, and triumphs. Maria and Jose, the first generation, come to Los Angeles, meet, marry, face deportation all in the 1930s. They establish their family in East L.A., and their children Chucho, Paco, Memo, Irene, Toni, and Jimmy deal with youth culture and the L.A. police in the '50s. As the second generation become adults in the '60s, the focus shifts to Jimmy, his marriage to Isabel (a Salvadorian refugee), their son, and Jimmy's journey to becoming a responsible parent.

In eastern France, two teenage cousins have the summer of their lives when they paddle a purloined canoe to the far shore of a lake.

Two high school students become stranded on a tropical island and must rely on each other for survival. They learn more about themselves and each other while falling in love.

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.

When their drug abusing mother is released from prison determined to rebuild their family, Rey kidnaps his younger brother Oliver and escapes their desert home for the California coast.

A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents.

A 16-year-old girl visits her gay half-brother and ends up seducing his boyfriend, thus wreaking havoc on all of their lives.

16-year-old Jamie Winkle and her extended family are left reeling after her calculating grandmother unveils an array of secrets on her deathbed. As her family deals with her grandmother's surprising dying messages, Jamie sets out to make the most of her summer and explores her sexuality.

In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can't teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.

A smart teenage girl comes of age in a small town with her self-centered parents who had her when they were teenagers.

Olivia and Matthew Grey, 18-year-old twins born into a world of privilege and high expectations. There are almost no boundaries between them - even their dreams are connected.

After their mother dies and their father leaves them, teenage brothers Tex and Mason McCormick struggle to make it on their own.

A teenager goes to desperate lengths to get attention when her mother gives birth to quints.

A mother and her daughter confront the intimidation of teen peer pressure and the emotionally brutalizing social rituals of high school.

Rachel is a rambunctious girl from a polygamist colony in southern Utah. On Rachel’s 15th birthday, she finds a forbidden cassette tape. Having never seen anything like it before, Rachel plays the cassette tape, and finds glorious rock & roll thereupon. Weeks later, Rachel realizes a miracle has occurred - and the cassette tape must have something to do with it. She leaves her family and runs away to the closest city: Las Vegas. There she searches for the singer of the band on the cassette tape.

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.

Husband and wife Gabe and Adelaide Wilson take their kids to their beach house expecting to unplug and unwind with friends. But as night descends, their serenity turns to tension and chaos when some shocking visitors arrive uninvited.

When an uptight young man and his fiancée move into his libertine mother's house, the resulting clash of life attitudes shakes everyone up.

An uptight, conservative businesswoman accompanies her boyfriend to his eccentric and outgoing family's annual Christmas celebration and finds that she's a fish out of water in their free-spirited way of life.

College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.

Fifteen-year-old Suzanne seeks refuge from a disintegrating family in a series of impulsive, promiscuous affairs. Her fulsome sexuality further ratchets up the suppressed passions of her narcissistic brother, insecure mother and brooding, authoritarian father.

About three generations of a family grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in the historic town of Sintra, Portugal.

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.

The teenage son of two fathers makes a documentary film about his parents but is surprised when a real-life plot twist occurs in his family.

On a small stretch of coastline as powerful as a man's will, Rick Kane came to surf the big waves. He found a woman who would show him how to survive, and a challenge unlike any other.

Montse, divorced and with two children who have long ignored her, prepares for a family reunion at her home on the Costa Brava.

In a world connected by YouTube, iTunes, and Facebook, Lola and her friends navigate the peer pressures of high school romance and friendship while dodging their sometimes overbearing and confused parents. When Lola's mom, Anne, "accidentally" reads her teenage daughter's racy journal, she realizes just how wide their communication gap has grown.

In the 70s two brothers battle killer waves, conservative society and ruthless bikers to kick-start the modern surf industry.

Twelve-year-old Noura dangles uncertainly in that difficult netherworld between childhood and adulthood. His growing libido has gotten him banned from the women's baths, where his mother took him when he was younger, but he's not yet old enough to participate in grown-up discussions with the men of his Tunisian village. Noura's only real friend is a troublemaker named Salih -- the village political outcast.

A group of queer best friends gather in the Fire Island Pines for their annual week of love and laughter. However, desires, dramas, drink and drugs push their bonds to the limits.

Dumped on her grandparents for the summer by her indifferent mother, acerbic and self-destructive teenager Greta disrupts the elderly couple's staid life on the Jersey Shore. Eventually, a romance helps Greta face down her demons.

After 15 years of marriage, Katie and her husband, Ben, have grown apart. While they keep up the facade of having a contented marriage, mostly to not worry their children, they aren't happy together and argue frequently. While the kids are away at camp, Katie and Ben decide to separate and try to reassess their relationship to see if they should stay together or split up for good.

When an unsuspecting town newcomer is drawn to local blood fiends, the Frog brothers and other unlikely heroes gear up to rescue him.

A teenager living with her sister and parents in Manhattan during the 1990s discovers that her father is having an affair.

Two spoiled Beverly Hills sisters who have been left penniless after their father's sudden death are forced to move in with their estranged aunt in East Los Angeles.

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

Two disconnected sisters are summoned to clean out their childhood bedrooms before their parents sell their family home.

A small circle of friends suffering from post-collegiate blues must confront the hard truth about life, love and the pursuit of gainful employment. As they struggle to map out survival guides for the future, the Gen-X quartet soon begins to realize that reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Two teenage boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and help him reunite with his lover and escape an avenging family and their armed posse.

A privileged rich debutante and a cynical struggling entertainer share a turbulent, but strong childhood friendship over the years.

A pair of teenagers in Western Australia looking to escape the monotony of life in a small town take up surfing lessons from a guy named Sando.

A woman in an unhappy relationship takes refuge with a friend's family on holiday in Tuscany.

A conservative lawyer named Diane takes her two teenage children Jake and Zoe to meet their estranged, hippie grandmother in Woodstock after her husband asks for a divorce.

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

The son of a Vietnam War Veteran must deal with neighborhood bullies as well as his dad's post-traumatic stress disorder while growing up in the deep south in the 1970's.

Follows the fate of Lyle, a violent adolescent who, in lieu of prison, is placed in a juvenile mental institution, where he encounters a group of equally troubled teens. This motley crew—abused, sexually confused, violent, and yet hanging on by their grit and anger—becomes Lyle's last lifeline as he fights to find meaning in a world that seems to defy understanding.

A group of troubled teens are sent to a rehabilitation program housed in a remote camp on the island of Fiji. What their parents believe is a state-of-the-art deluxe institution in a beautiful natural environment turns out to be a prison-like boot camp where they are abused and brainwashed.

Aviva is thirteen, awkward and sensitive. Her mother Joyce is warm and loving, as is her father, Steve, a regular guy who does have a fierce temper from time to time. The film revolves around her family, friends and neighbors.

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

A novelist fed up with the establishment profiting from "Black" entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.

At Pacific Palisades High, a poor Latino falls hard for a troubled girl from the affluent neighborhood.

This is the story of a dysfunctional New York family, and their attempts to reconcile

Beth, a bookish teenager, befriends Emilia, an aspiring novelist who has just arrived in town. Emilia soon begins an affair with Beth's father that threatens to have devastating consequences.

Friends, family, and lovers struggle to find love, forgiveness, and meaning in an almost war-torn world riddled with comedy and pathos.

On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.

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 troubled Southern man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her (and New York City) in the process.

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.

Roger, a straight-laced politician has big plans to propose to his dream girl at her family's lake house. But everything goes awry when he meets his potential brother-in-law Todd: a full-time camp counselor with a heart of gold and a wild sense of fun, pining to be Roger's best friend, and ultimately catapulting him into a series of unfortunate events. As Roger tries to take a stand amidst outrageous fishing excursions, propulsive water jetpacks and American history-themed musicals, he realizes that being a part of a new family may be more difficult than he'd thought.

During a heat wave, strange clouds start pouring down acid rain, wreaking devastation and panic throughout France. In a world teetering on the edge, a girl and her divorced parents must join forces to confront and try to escape this climate catastrophe.

Four couples, all friends, descend on a tropical island resort. Though one husband and wife are there to work on their marriage, the others just want to enjoy some fun in the sun. They soon find, however, that paradise comes at a price: Participation in couples therapy sessions is mandatory. What started out as a cut-rate vacation turns into an examination of the common problems many face.

Moving back to her native Netherlands after years of living in the United States, a teenage girl navigates the intricacies of Dutch high school life.

In a Turkish village, five orphaned sisters live under strict rule while members of their family prepare their arranged marriages.

After moving to New Jersey, Lola bags a coveted role in a school play, which earns her the wrath of Carla, the most popular girl in school, who will do anything to ruin Lola's life.

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.

At the end of the 1960s, when the air is filled with rock-and-roll and student rebellions are changing the world, the older of two brothers joins a prestigious newsroom of the public radio broadcaster. Not long after, he finds himself in the middle of a dangerous conflict between journalists and the secret service.
