Focusing on the relationship between Hubert Minel, a 16-year-old Quebecois living in suburban Montreal, and his single mother Chantale, the film beautifully captures the anxieties of a mother-son relationship. While he gauges her with contempt, only seeing her out-of-date sweater and kitschy decor, the ingrained mechanisms (i.e. manipulation and guilt) of their relationship beautifully (and tragically) unravel on the big screen.

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.

SWEET THING centers around the lives of two children in contemporary New Bedford, Massachusetts in particular one eventful summer spent in a beach house with their mother and her boyfriend. The story is an intense but ultimately uplifting, poetic rendering of childhood that captures the essence of that time in life when a day can last forever. The friendships, loyalties, and challenges of adolescent youth propel the story into a triumph of childhood...