20 movies to watch with your teen on Netflix Canada

1. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

Lara Jean is faced with humiliation after the five secret love letters she wrote to different boys get leaked. In the midst of diverting an awkward letter-confrontation situation, she gets herself caught in a lie that winds up surprising her.

2. Coach Carter

Ken Carter is a tough coach, with strict rules and a focus on academic discipline. Carter’s attempt to teach his athletes proper values and life skills becomes a journey filled with struggle. When all team activities are cancelled due to the misbehaviour of the players, the entire high school is outraged.

3. To the Bone

Watch a brave 20-year-old battle anorexia in a group home while navigating a journey of self-discovery. This harrowing story—involving her family, too—will teach you and your teen how to embrace life throughout its challenges.

4. Southside with You

This romantic cross between a drama and biography is inspired by Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date. The early days of their love story, pre-president-and-first-lady status, are filled with sweet anecdotes taking place in Chicago’s South Side.

5. Lift Me Up

When a teen loses her mother, she is left with her new stepdad. The two of them find a way to connect—by way of her love of dance and his past.

6. My Life as a Zucchini

An emotional, heartfelt and quirky story of an orphaned boy is brought to the screen with stop-motion animation. This lonely boy learns how friendships and trust can be born in loss.

7. The Edge of Seventeen

An awkward teen, always in her brother’s shadow, has a hard time processing the fact that he started dating her best friend. Her sudden increase in loneliness challenges this already difficult time in her life.

8. Amateur

An eighth grader gets recognized for his advanced talent and a promising future in basketball. He finds himself playing on a team with older guys at an elite boarding school where his academics and life choices are challenged.

9. The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Charlie is entering freshman year battling depression and the grief of his best friend’s suicide. This coming-of-age film narrates how he learns about himself and the real world, with the help of two unconventional seniors with whom he connects.

 

10. Next Gen

Mai, a lonely girl who hates robots, finds herself becoming friends with one. These two tight-knit friends-turned-vigilantes go on an adventure to take down a villain with a sinister plot.

11. Just One of the Guys

This rom-com from the ’80s is about a young girl who disguises herself as a boy—to prove that sexism is real after a few boys receive a journalism internship over her and her niche skills. However, things get a little more complicated than she anticipated.

12. Lady Bird

A high school senior in the early 2000s longs for a life different than her own. Christine “Lady Bird” MacPherson’s Sacramento Catholic high school and her family’s meagre lifestyle just don’t measure up.

13. Easy A

Olive has a clean reputation but tries to climb the social ladder at school by spreading a few self-induced rumours. With a parallel plot to The Scarlet Letter, she is in over her head trying to decide if this is all worth it.

14. The Outcasts

Best friends, who are often made fun of by the school’s popular victimizers, manage to turn the student body’s outcasts against the “Queen Bee” and her friends.

15. The Kissing Booth

Elle falls for her best friend’s older brother—but he’s off limits, according to a set of rules they established years back. She learns that sometimes following your heart is more important than following the rules, but that comes with risks and consequences.

16. The DUFF

After realizing a consistent dynamic in high school friend-groups, a student is prompted to outshine the label she’s been given. With the help of a popular jock, who is also the “boy next door,” she attempts to reinvent her identity.

17. Coco

An ancestral ban on music puts Miguel, an aspiring musician, on a journey to prove his talent and find his great-great-grandfather in the Land of the Dead.

18. Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List

A teen girl and her gay best friend develop a list of off-limit boys they are both into, so they don’t have to deal with jealous feelings and fights about guys.

19. Marvel’s Black Panther

It’s time for Prince T’Challa to return home and serve as the king of his nation, Wakanda. However, when his home is put in danger, he fights for justice, taking up the mantle of the Black Panther.

20. Dumplin’

Her mom is a former beauty queen, but plus-size teen Willowdean thinks pageants are silly. That is, until she decides to join the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant as a protest to show that everybody—and every body—deserves a chance to shine.

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