Peter Akar and Rita Balogh’s feature project Kind of Adults starts at the end, in this case during the final year of high school, “when the safety of childhood starts to slip away and the exhilarating possibilities of adulthood become uncertain.” What results is a “raw, immersive coming-of-age documentary co-created with charismatic Gen Z teens over six turbulent years,” the filmmakers underline.
The film was shot between 2019 and 2026, and the project notes further explain how, blending self-shot and observational footage, the film captures “identity crises, depression, and fleeting joy as the young people search for meaning in a world that is changing faster than they can keep up.”
“Much of the film consists of the brutally honest footage of the protagonists themselves,” the filmmakers stress. “As the years pass, they become the archivists of their own disappearing community. Five years later, the class reunites and discovers that, although they are no longer part of one another’s everyday lives, they remain inseparable from each other’s past. What once felt like an eternal moment has quietly become a memory.”
The 90-minute film will be ready in 2027. During CineLink, the filmmakers were looking for sales representation, distributors and broadcasters, as well as close the finances.
“As filmmakers and as parents, we are deeply fascinated by the fragile period when childhood quietly gives way to adulthood,” co-director Akar, a National Film and Television School alumnus, underlines. “We did not set out to explain a generation. We simply stayed with the same group of young people long enough to witness how time quietly transformed them, and us.”
The protagonists became collaborators in the filmmaking process, he adds, and the “raw authenticity” of their self-shot footage became the backbone of the narrative structure. “Filming each other in intimate moments as friends, lovers, and classmates, they captured moments no outside observer could witness. “
“Ultimately, Kind of Adults is a film about time,” Akar continues. “At the beginning, every moment feels like eternity. By the end, six years have condensed into a single emotion: nostalgia. What once seemed infinite now survives only in memory, reminding us that the communities shaping our everyday lives rarely disappear completely, they simply become part of who we are.”
Producer and co-director Rita Balogh adds: “Kind of Adults is first and foremost a film for Generation Z. We hope young audiences will recognise themselves in it, not because every experience is the same but because the uncertainty, vulnerability, loneliness, joy, and intensity of becoming an adult are rarely spoken about with such raw honesty.”
“We want the film to remind them that they are not navigating these years alone,” she adds. “We also see the film as a bridge between generations that can open up conversation. While today’s young adults face challenges shaped by social media, political polarisation and an increasingly unpredictable future, the emotional experience of leaving childhood behind is universal. We hope parents will recognise their own younger selves in these characters and discover new ways of understanding the generation they are raising.”
