Youth film: Genre, Phenomenon or Problem?

As we try to take a closer look at the study of youth film, which at first seems a clear and verifiable category, we are soon confronted with a series of problems and unease. The first one is the vague division between children’s film and youth film,which are often used interchangeably. Therefore, a practice of differentiation by the stage of growing up, or the principle of age provision was enforced, which means that the definition covers the level of maturation that begins with the transition from childhood into adolescence and ends with the entry into adulthood. Although it is difficult to formalistically delineate the time of youth with the twelfth and eighteenth or twentieth year of life, which is supposed to cover adolescence, the most stringent classifications insist on the necessity of the age provision, while looser definitions allow for more freedom. The present reflection, which focuses more on the substantive, thematic and formal emphases typical of the treatment of young people in various stages of growing up rather than on the generational will move in the context of these – not so strict – coordinates.

The integral (Slovenian) version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!