Best movies like The Black Balloon

A socially awkward teenage math prodigy finds new confidence and new friendships when he lands a spot on the British squad at the International Mathematics Olympiad.

Set in 1962, a young prepubescent boy in rural Australia watches painfully as his best friend and first love blossoms into womanhood and falls for a thuggish rugby player, changing the lives of everyone involved.

When a teenager finds herself pregnant, with no memory of having had sex, she determines that she is carrying the child of God.

When the popular, restless Landon Carter is forced to participate in the school drama production he falls in love with Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of the town's minister. Jamie has a "to-do" list for her life and also a very big secret she must keep from Landon.

An alienated teenager, saddened that he has moved away from London, must find a way to deal with a dark family secret.

The story of a mentally anguished high school history teacher going through a complete reassessment of his life. His method for reassessing his life is to narrate it to his class and interweave in it three generations of his family's history.

Before going on vacation, self-involved psychiatrist Dr. Leo Marvin has the misfortune of taking on a new patient: Bob Wiley. An exemplar of neediness and a compendium of phobias, Bob follows Marvin to his family's country house. Dr. Marvin tries to get him to leave; the trouble is, everyone loves Bob. As his oblivious patient makes himself at home, Dr. Marvin loses his professional composure and, before long, may be ready for the loony bin himself.

Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble. Settled into a job at a grocery store and an ongoing affair with local woman Betty Carver, Gilbert finally has his life shaken up by the free-spirited Becky.

Diagnosed with a mental illness halfway through his senior year of high school, a witty, introspective teen struggles to keep it a secret while falling in love with a brilliant classmate who inspires him to open his heart and not be defined by his condition.

A mentally challenged girl proves herself to be every bit as capable as her "perfect" sister when she moves into an apartment and begins going to college.

Victor, a Lower East Side teenager, as he deals with his eccentric family, including his strict grandmother, his bratty sister, and a younger brother who completely idolizes him. Along the way he tries to win the affections of Judy, who is very careful and calculating when it comes to how she deals with men.

While exploring the neighboring woods, 13-year-old John discovers an unfinished bunker — a deep hole in the ground. Seemingly without provocation, he drugs his affluent parents and older sister and drags their unconscious bodies into the bunker, where he holds them captive. As they anxiously wait for John to free them from the hole, the boy returns home, where he can finally do what he wants.

Natalie is high school royalty, but her queen bee status falls apart when she falls for the new guy at school. Although Keith ignores her at first, they soon become friends -- even though Natalie suspects that Keith has something to hide. As the free-spirited Keith shows Natalie how to embrace what life offers, they grow closer -- until a secret tests the bounds of their relationship

Two teens facing personal struggles form a powerful bond as they embark on a cathartic journey chronicling the wonders of Indiana.

Milly and Louis, and their recently-widowed mom, Charlene, move to a new neighborhood. Once there, they all deal with a variety of personal problems, but Milly finds a friend in Eric, her autistic next door neighbor. Eric has a fascination with flight, and as the story progresses, he exerts an enthralling force of change on all those around him.

When 15-year-old Matt Freeman gets his girlfriend, Francesca, pregnant, her family decides to put the unborn baby up for adoption. Matt agrees to the decision, but begins to rethink it. This movie is taken from the father's point of view.

A woman struggles with her self-image in a house run by a weight-obsessed mother, alongside a younger sister whose eating disorder has tragic coincidences.

Pregnant sixteen year old Jacey's well-meaning mother forces her to keep the birth a secret and decides to raise the baby as her own.

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.

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

Karl Childers, a mentally disabled man, has been in the custody of the state mental hospital since the age of 12 for killing his mother and her lover. Although thoroughly institutionalized, he is deemed fit to be released into the outside world.

A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life and consider their daughter to be “misbehaving” whenever she’s trying to find her own way in life.

A small town girl is caught between dead-end jobs. A high-profile, successful man becomes wheelchair bound following an accident. The man decides his life is not worth living until the girl is hired for six months to be his new caretaker. Worlds apart and trapped together by circumstance, the two get off to a rocky start. But the girl becomes determined to prove to the man that life is worth living and as they embark on a series of adventures together, each finds their world changing in ways neither of them could begin to imagine.

Sutter, a popular party animal, unexpectedly meets the introverted Aimee after waking up on a stranger's lawn. As Sutter deals with the problems in his life and Aimee plans for her future beyond school, an unexpected romance blossoms between them.

A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.

A fragile Kansas girl's unrequited and forbidden love for a handsome young man from the town's most powerful family drives her to heartbreak and madness.

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.

Teenager Les Anderson thinks his life can't get any worse after he flunks his driver's exam, but he's wrong. Even though he didn't receive his license, Les refuses to break his date with the cool Mercedes Lane, and he decides to lift his family's prize luxury car for the occasion. Unfortunately, Mercedes sneaks some booze along and passes out drunk, and a confused Les makes the bad decision of enlisting his rebellious friend, Dean, to help.

The story of the Buckman family and friends, attempting to bring up their children. They suffer/enjoy all the events that occur: estranged relatives, the 'black sheep' of the family, the eccentrics, the skeletons in the closet, and the rebellious teenagers.

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.

Two popular teen boys, best friends since childhood, discover their lives, families, and girlfriends dramatically upended after an unexpected incident occurs on the night of a 17th birthday party.

Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for two years to achieve his dream of buying two red-bone coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in life as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with his dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann.

Australian teenager Heidi is left with little choice but to leave home after she's caught red-handed with her mother's boyfriend. With few options, Heidi ends up in Jindabyne, a tourist community. Upon meeting Joe at a bar, she pursues a relationship with him and tries to find something resembling a normal home life. Heidi makes small strides by getting a job and finding a place to stay, but her relationship with Joe must overcome more than its share of hurdles.

An awkward 13-year-old leaves her cranky grandfather in rural Texas, to live with her mother in Fort Worth.

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.

Eddie returns to his home town on the south coast of New South Wales. Having left for the city without explanation a few years previously, he tries to pick up the pieces of his life and fit back in to the lives of those he left, including his ex-girlfriend Tully and brother Pete.

A married, middle-class London couple are shocked when they seem to have been blessed — or cursed — with an immaculate conception.

A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.

Four women, whose kids attend the same preschool class, get together for a "fun mom dinner". When the night takes an unexpected turn, these unlikely new friends realize they have more in common than just marriage and motherhood.

A teenage girl is plagued by bizarre occurrences and deaths related to her new home.

The story of a teenage boy coming of age in a suburban grow-operation, where every day is paradise or fresh hell. But it's always a trip. Sheltered all his life and home-schooled by loving parents who are also committed criminals, Quinn Dawson yearns to experience the normalcy of the suburban world which surrounds him.

A coming-of-age story of a teenage girl from a liberal upbringing who moves to a conservative baptist community in rural 1950s America.

For the first time in 15 years, all four siblings in a family show up to care for their dying mother, who is only given a couple of weeks to live. One comes from America with her two children. A divorced sister also comes with her child and sneaks off regularly to meet a mystery man who may be her ex-husband. The third & youngest daughter is an unmarried nurse aware of her ticking biological clock. The only son chases after his grumpy father who seems to not care a whit about his wife's circumstances. The four are also faced my their mother's dreams to accomplish a few things before she dies - to visit a beach she had visited in the past, to see her youngest married, and to visit Paris. She also wants to be embalmed and be honored with a 21 gun salute. Thus the whole group has to set off in the quest to fulfill their mother's wishes.

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 woman's schizophrenia affects her relationships with her husband and son.

Henry Gamble's Birthday Party takes place over 24 hours at the birthday pool party of 17-year-old preacher's kid Henry Gamble. The party guests include adults and teenagers from his church, as well as Henry's "secular" friends, including the closeted young Logan, who has eyes for Henry.

Abigail, a divorced mother of two, is struggling to balance the dynamics within her dysfunctional family as she attempts to cultivate new love.

An ordinary boy named Michael is going through some extraordinary changes in his life. His family has just moved into an unfamiliar house, and his brand new baby sister has fallen ill. One day, while cleaning out the garden shed, he stumbles across something mysterious, a strange creature huddled in the corner; weak of body but strong of will. This is Skellig.

Mary Faith Rapple, a bright high school senior, has never been part of the "in crowd." She teaches a night class, cares for her widowed father and pretty much keeps to herself. When a fellow loner moves to Due East, she finds herself in a relationship for the first time, leading to a small town scandal that changes her life forever.

Life on the Rock never seemed easy, but for Mitsy it is especially rough. The teenager has been abandoned by her mother, a particularly unfit parent prone to both the bottle and the sex trade. She is left to be brought up by her mercurial grandmother Bride, who is well-meaning but oppressively suffocating. Mitsy's dreams for the future hinge on her desire to be a hairdresser, but her current emotional well-being revolves around a wee dog named Sparky, an unwanted canine misfit to whom she becomes hopelessly attached. After Bride agrees to let Mitsy take the dog in as a pet, the teen tries desperately to create a happy, safe place for Sparky to thrive.