It’s a film simple in plot but abundant in mood and atmospheric allure. Premature’s grainy aesthetic further enhances the film’s hyper-realistic feel. Initially, Ayanna-with her quiet and calculated nature-is reluctant to Isaiah’s advances, but her ultimate surrender to her reciprocal feelings of attraction opens up a world of emotion that challenges her self-perception and vision of the future. Howard plays 17-year-old Ayanna, a young poet who falls in love with Isaiah (Joshua Boone), an older music producer, the summer before she leaves for college. Director Rashaad Ernesto Green co-wrote the film with the film’s star, Zora Howard. Premature is a heart-wrenching, Harlem-set film about romance, tenderness and departure. Bend it Like Beckham’s strengths lie not only in its ability to gracefully blend multiple genres-sports, family dramedy, romance- but also in the ways in which it honors the cultural relativism of “coming-of-age.” Bonus points for getting Bollywood legend Anupam Kher to play Jess’ dad. When Jess befriends Juliette (Keira Knightley), a fellow female footballer, and secretly joins the local women’s football team for which Juliette plays, she embarks upon a complicated emotional journey in which she must choose between her dreams and complying with her parent’s vision of the kind of woman she should be.

Jess struggles to assert her own authentic girlhood as she navigates her parents’ gendered cultural expectations of her and disapproval of her athletic aspiration. Bend it Like Beckham follows Jesminder “Jess” Bhamra (Parminder Nagra), an 18-year-old British-Indian girl with amazing football skills who idolizes David Beckham. But the bildungsroman for which Chadha is perhaps most renowned is the 2002 romantic comedy/sports film Bend it Like Beckham. Here are 10 great movies about women of color coming of age:īritish filmmaker Gurinder Chadha has made a plethora of fun coming-of-age films with stellar soundtracks, including Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging and 2019’s Bruce Springsteen-centric Blinded by the Light. Although I-like other film lovers-would love even more coming-of-age stories about underrepresented youth, this March is a great time to spotlight the work of dazzling filmmakers like Gurinder Chadha, Nijla Mu’min and Minhal Baig, all of whom have used their talents to share wonderful stories about girls of color growing up. While some have taken the essentialist origin of this narrative framework to mean that the tenets of “coming-of-age” are not applicable to women and/or queer people, there are some spectacular films that showcase the becoming of young women of color nonetheless. The bildungsroman, or the coming-of-age story, was created by a white cishet man to talk about the emotional growth of white cishet male characters. It’s Women’s History Month! While these stories, like the lives of women, deserve to be celebrated year-round, the spirit of this month’s commemoration warrants a delicious list to remind everyone of some great movies.

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