Film

We Are the Best!

Name: We Are the Best!
Genre: Drama, Music
Released: 2013
Cast: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne, David Dencik, Johan Liljemark

Coming-of-age

A Swedish film about three teenage girls in 1980s Stockholm who form a punk band with no instruments and minimal musical ability. It's a buoyant, unsentimental portrait of adolescent friendship, creative defiance, and the modest magic of deciding something matters just because you do. Funny and genuinely moving without ever reaching for your heartstrings.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like coming-of-age stories where the friendship is the whole engine, and where scrappy, mischievous kids are taken seriously without being sentimentalised.

Skip it if you need a plot that builds toward a big payoff, since this is loose, episodic and happy to wander around its characters' small rebellions.

What it asks of you: Around an hour and forty minutes, it moves at a loose, unhurried clip, with bright, cheeky humour that keeps a bruised undertow beneath the noise.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Sing Street2016

Dublin teenagers form a band to impress a girl and escape their grim reality. It has the same joyful collision of inexperience, ambition, and music as your entry point—plus real warmth and some genuinely great original songs.

But The plot is fairly conventional coming-of-age stuff, and it leans harder into romance and sentiment than We Are the Best! does.

The Florida Project2017

Childhood friendship between two girls navigating poverty and instability in Orlando. It captures that same unsentimental eye for how kids actually talk and think, and finds profound tenderness in small moments without ever becoming maudlin.

But It's quieter and slower than a music film, and the circumstances are grimmer. Some find it frustratingly plotless.

Eighth Grade2018

A thirteen-year-old navigates the last days of middle school. Like We Are the Best!, it's acutely attuned to how awkward and funny and real adolescence is, with no score to tell you when to feel things.

But It's almost entirely unglamorous, and can feel like a long text conversation. The humor is dry and indie-specific, which won't land for everyone.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from We Are the Best!

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Show Me Love1998

Lukas Moodysson directs both, bringing the same clear-eyed, warm-hearted observation of adolescent reality, just pivoting to romance instead of music.

Two teenage girls in a small Swedish town fall in love. Same director as We Are the Best!, and it has that exact unsentimental clarity about girls and friendship—but this time the teenage emotional turbulence becomes romantic and sexual, showing how she finds the same truth in a different register.

But It's a lesbian romance, and while it's honest rather than precious about it, that's the entire story. Some find the melodrama of teenage love hard to sustain for a feature.

Almost Famous2000

A teenage music obsessive follows a rock band on tour in the 1970s, discovering both the reality and the myth of it all. Passion, music, youth, and the gap between your dreams and actual experience—it's got real depth beneath the warmth.

But It's much longer and more sprawling, with bigger emotions and a more cinematic scope. Some find Cameron Crowe's nostalgia cloying.

Rushmore1998

A brilliant, eccentric teenager channels everything into projects and passion with total conviction. It shares We Are the Best!'s willingness to find characters funny without being cruel about them, and treats youth energy as genuinely admirable.

But It's more stylized and whimsical, less grounded. The plot becomes increasingly baroque and the tone shifts significantly in the second half.

Mustang2015

Five Turkish sisters navigate adolescence and friendship under severe constraint. It has the same unsentimental portrait of girls being girls, with deeper political stakes and visual poetry woven through the naturalism.

But It's darker and more oppressive in tone. The beauty is sometimes overwhelming and not everyone's idea of entertainment.

Daria1997

A witty, alienated teenage girl and her best friend navigate high school. The deadpan humor, the genuine affection between characters, and the refusal to make adolescence either tragic or cute—it's in the same DNA as your film.

But It's a TV series, so very different pacing and depth. The animation is deliberately cheap-looking, which can read as dated now.

mid90s2018

A thirteen-year-old discovers skateboarding and a crew of slightly older boys in 1990s LA. It's shot and edited to feel like a found memory, with genuine affection for how kids actually talk and bond over shared interests.

But It's looser and less structured than We Are the Best!, and the characters can feel underdeveloped. Some find the realism claustrophobic.

The Way He Looks2014

A blind Brazilian teenager and his best friend navigate school, identity, and emerging sexuality. It has the same tonal balance—funny and awkward and tender, with real tenderness for how young people actually are.

But It's quieter and less propulsive. The dialogue-heavy scenes won't work if you're not genuinely interested in just listening to teenagers talk.

The Land of Hope2012

Both films find profound meaning in people's stubborn refusal to accept the world as it's been arranged for them, treating quiet defiance as a complete emotional story.

An elderly couple in rural Japan refuses to sell their land to developers. It sounds completely different from We Are the Best!, but it has the same structure—ordinary people saying 'no' to what everyone tells them is inevitable, with quiet dignity and even humor about their own smallness.

But It's slow, contemplative, and almost plotless. The emotional stakes are existential rather than dramatic, and patience is mandatory.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster2004

It's the adult reckoning with the punk impulse shown in We Are the Best!—what happens when making music stops being defiance and becomes a job, a marriage, a liability.

A documentary following Metallica in the 2000s as they write an album, see a therapist, and fight with each other. Where We Are the Best! is girls making punk from nothing and joy, this is the brutal reality of what happens when that fire has to pay bills and survive actual success.

But It's three and a half hours of millionaire rock stars having therapy. Some find it tedious, others find it embarrassing, and you have to actually want to know.