I Am Mother depicts the birth and growth of a woman raised by a robot called Mother (voice by Rose Byrne). The woman (Clara Rugaard), referred to only as Daughter by her artificial parent, spends her days in a sleek bunker of chrome walls and garish lighting.

Director Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me, based on Stephen King’s novella The Body, has a sharper angle on growing up than most stories. Like King’s original work, it highlights the fragility of innocence using the story of four twelve-year-old boys who set out to find the body of a missing kid. Semi-autobiographical, it reflects King’s own experiences through a young writer named Gordie and communicates his thoughts on the bittersweet realities of growing up.

Ricardo Bouyett isn’t a big fan of the linear photography process. That doesn’t mean he’ll turn down family clients looking for a nice, “normal” photo session. “It’s not really what fulfills me,” he said. The true portfolio of Bouyett incorporates color, movement, and effects that highlight the light and dark nature of being a human.

Ben Stiller declares his love for the everyman in his film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013). It follows Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller), a photo developer for Life, who does more in each of his waking dreams than in each day of his real life. Stiller places Walter in the seat of the classic hero, using a romantic style of cinematography and dialogue to convey him as a dreamer who dives, fearless, into the realest adventure of his life.

Jonah Hill’s Mid90s offers a look into the past. Not the distant past, not even his own past, but the history of a generation. A period piece, love song, memory, Mid90s is Hill’s testimony about his recollection of being a kid. His characters’ relationships tell a universal story with a particular flavor – that of his nostalgic childhood decade. They present the confusion and anxiety of kids living in the ’90s and communicate the brutal truth about the way they were forced to grow up.