A Deeper Guide is a monthly column from pop-up cinema club Deeper Into Movies, where actors, directors and other creatives share their most inspiring cinematic pleasures. For more information about upcoming screenings, visit their website.

Spring, summer and autumn fail to hold a candle to the weight of nostalgia that summer brings around every time May rolls around, with its hazy early mornings and ginger twilight evenings. In one’s youth, these months would be spent basking in the glorious, frivolous ephemerality of adolescence, yet, once the winds of change have blown those times away, such celebrated evenings will haunt you for the rest of your life, in the words of the great Jonathan Richman.

Just like great music, cinema has long held the power to transport oneself back to the very greatest days of summer sun, with filmmakers using the season to evoke visceral feelings of love, regret, opportunity and much more. Such movies aren’t just made to pierce into our nostalgia for youth either, with films like Alexander Payne’s Sideways, Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona and William Wyler’s Roman Holiday each eliciting the frenetic joys of love and passion under the sun.

Yet, given the nature of Earth’s most popular season, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that our picks for the ten movies that perfectly depict summer speak to every aspect of the season’s ability to transport us back in time to when the seemingly endless days presented a canvas of ceaseless opportunity.

ADVENTURELAND (2009, GREG MOTTOLA) 

Unless you’re lucky enough to live just off the M3 next door to Thorpe Park or on the scenic slopes of Scarborough, a mere stone’s throw from Flamingo Land, it’s unlikely that you would have worked at an amusement park or summer camp in the UK. But in the USA, such summer jobs are commonplace, with Greg Mottola’s 2009 Adventureland being one of the finest films to represent the colour of such an opportunity.

Starring Kristen Stewart hot off the back of her Twilight success and Jesse Eisenberg shortly before he became a darling of indie cinema, Adventureland tailed James, a college graduate who reluctantly takes a summer job at an amusement park while he searches for his real life purpose. Simply charming, Adventureland allowed Mottola to expand on the earnest aspects of 2007’s Superbad with a coming-of-age tale that oozed allure, illustrating a group of disparate souls thriving in the ‘purgatory’ of in-between jobs.

MY SUMMER OF LOVE (2004, PAWEL PAWLIKOWSKI)

Just as Adventureland demonstrated how summer can be a plain of endless opportunity, Paweł Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love explored how such spontaneity can blossom unlikely love and personal discovery. Also featuring Emily Blunt and Natalie Press, a pair of stars whose careers were only just beginning to germinate, Pawlikowski’s film, which was based on the novel of the same name by Helen Cross, explores the romance that flourishes between two young women under the unusually golden sun of the Yorkshire countryside.

Rarely has the English countryside been shot with such gorgeous fragility as in Pawlikowski’s early 00s romance, with ethereal love pervading every acre of land that surrounds the stunning residence of the protagonist. Perfectly distilling the mood of summer in all its mystery and allure, few films capture the addiction of obsession quite as delicately as Pawlikowski’s gem.

A SWEDISH LOVE STORY (1970, ROY ANDERSSON)

Speaking of the delicacy of young romance, the unspoken desire that suffuses through Roy Andersson’s 1970 coming-of-age tale, A Swedish Love Story, feels unparalleled in the wider world of cinema. The director’s feature debut made long before the Living trilogy that would make him a celebrated name in the world of arthouse cinema, A Swedish Love Story, follows the lives of two young teenagers who fall in love under the judgmental eyes of their parents.

Andersson gives the romance of his teen characters the weight that they themselves perceive it to have. Shot with as much melodrama as Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, yet without the maturity that adulthood brings, A Swedish Love Story is one of cinema’s greatest odes to the sheer drama, passion and delicacy of young love, with the entire story unfolding under the idyllic stillness of the Scandinavian summer.

DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993, RICHARD LINKLATER)

A similar level of cinematic delicacy is given to Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, with the director treating adolescence of the late 70s with an ephemeral glow. Rightfully considered to be one of the greatest coming-of-age tales of all time, Linklater’s 90s classic introduced the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Milla Jovovich and Adam Goldberg to the fold with a film that explored the joys of youth during the final day of school in 1976.

A lover of 24-hour time constraints, each of Linklater’s first four movies utilised the bliss of a life-changing single day, with Dazed and Confused providing a snapshot into the lives of bewildered yet optimistic individuals, each sharing in their collective disorientation. Moving with a frenetic tempo, experiencing Linkater’s seminal film is like briefly becoming a Texas senior and joining the party yourself.

SNACK SHACK (2024, ADAM REHMEIR)

No doubt inspired by Linklater, who added some adolescent vibrancy to the world of 90s cinema, Adam Rehmeier’s overlooked 2024 film Snack Shack is a throwback not only to the world of late 20th century style but also to the flippant nature of 00s comedy. Set in 1991’s Nebraska, the film sees a pair of opportunistic young men refurbish a poolside snack shack right in time for the summer season.

Gabriel LaBelle and Conor Sherry are the charming pair behind the lead characters, with both actors giving as much gusto to their performances as many of the other aforementioned duos on this list so far. Lovingly dissecting the opportunistic nature of summer, Rehmeier instils his tale with all the romance, self-discovery and subversion that comes with the pleasure of the dog days.

DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS (2001, STACY PERALTA)

From dog days to Dogtown. Stacy Peralta’s celebrated documentary about the rise of the Zephyr skateboarding team, who changed the face of the sport forever. Set throughout the 70s and beyond, the film charts the team’s rise in Santa Monica and Venice, California, whose early adolescence spent surfing went on to inform their revolutionary approach to skateboarding.

While being one of the greatest films ever made about skateboarding, documenting the rise of such game-changing figures as Jay Adams and Tony Alva, Dogtown and Z-Boys also captures the sheer joy of summer, in which, from dawn till dusk, opportunity is seized. Bouncing with energy and exuberance, Stacy Peralta’s film is instilled with a boundless, unparalleled, lust for life.

THE ENDLESS SUMMER (1966, BRUCE BROWN)

Just as Dogtown and Z-Boys spoke to the rise of an influential pack of skateboarders informed by the world of surfing, Bruce Brown’s documentary, The Endless Summer, could be considered a spiritual successor. Playing a major role in popularising surfing for a new generation, Brown’s 1966 film followed Robert August and Mike Hynson as they ventured away from California in search of the one perfect wave.

Such takes the duo on a trip across the world, popularising the sport everywhere they go, from the beaches of Australia to the waters of Nigeria, with Brown capturing the entire trip on versatile 16mm film. Led by a casual narration, The Endless Summer feels like a calming travelogue that speaks to the pleasure of pushing your limits and seeking new experiences away from your comfort zone.

THE SWIMMER (1968, FRANK PERRY)

This beauty of summer opportunity can be shared in Frank Perry’s dreamlike 1968 film The Swimmer, a moral tale that warns of the dangers of living under the comfort blanket of nostalgia. Adapted from the short story of the same name by John Cheever, the tale begins with the strapping Ned Merrill announcing that he will “swim home” across the Connecticut valley and back home, taking a dip in each and every swimming pool he sees along the way.

But as Burt Lancaster’s protagonist gets ever closer to home, his egotistical facade steadily drops to reveal an ugly truth. Taking place on an impossibly beautiful summer’s day, despite The Swimmer being a tragedy at heart, it is also an excellent representation of how the season creates myth and deep feelings long after its closure.

AMERICAN HONEY (2016, ANDREA ARNOLD)

Such tales and myths are explored in Andrea Arnold’s excellent 2016 coming-of-age film American Honey, a tale about lost souls searching for meaning. Tailing along with a crew of misfits, the film centres on Star, played by Sasha Lane, a teenage girl who joins a travelling magazine sales group to try and find some sort of purpose to her existence.

Seemingly one of the few contemporary movies to tackle the true experiences of young people living on life’s fringes with genuine authenticity, Arnold’s film explores what it means to truly belong in a world which encourages conformity and rejects outsiders.

THE BEACH BUM (2019, HARMONY KORINE)

From Dazed and Confused, which basks in summer’s majesty, to The Swimmer, which warns of how the season’s wondrous delights can haunt you’re caught in the trap of nostalgia, this list has covered almost each and every feeling the hottest months of the year can elicit. The takeaway, if there is one at all, should be to seize such months, “suck the nectar and fucking rawdog it till the wheels come off,” as Moondog of Harmony Korine’s deeply underrated 2019 film The Beach Bum proudly exclaims.

A satirical breakdown of contemporary celebrity culture and the allure of ‘success’ under the remit of capitalism, The Beach Bum is a subversive tale that follows a stoner and poet, played by Matthew McConaughey, whose life is upended by sudden tragedy. But, rather than consider the catastrophe of life, Moondog sees the value in nihilism, with Korine using absurdity to speak to the true value of life, fun and adventure.

In his coastal home in the Sunshine State, Moondog simply basks in life’s joys, telling a journalist in one of the film’s most memorable scenes: “I like to have fun man, fun’s the fucking gun. That’s why I like boats, I like the water, I like sunshine”.