The temperature has fallen; it has started to rain again, and summer is already receding into memory. It’s back-to-school season. Though not all of us will be returning to lessons and books, September marks a new beginning nonetheless: a chance for those of us who are not heading back into classes to get back into studious habits. Read, write, create, or, you know, watch a film…

And what better to watch this time of year than a film about going to school? School films are their own genre of sorts, with a familiar set of codes and conventions: sports teams, proms, bullies, cliques, parties and puberty. With their rules and hierarchies, schools and universities are where we first encounter many of life’s humiliations and excitements, as we begin to work out who we are and how we want to be seen. These coming-of-age experiences, both personal and universal, make classrooms a ripe setting for filmmakers.

My selection of classics spans countries and decades, girls’ schools and boys’ schools, private and public, from primary through to university. I’ve picked films that have an edge, that subvert what we expect from a film set at school. The following nine films use strange, often experimental techniques to portray teenage rebellion and obsession, both in and out of the classroom.

The bell rings; class has commenced.

SCHOOL DAZE (1988)

Did you know that Spike Lee directed an all-Black campus musical in 1988? The sometimes singing and dancing School Daze is a college hangout film, set during homecoming week, exploring the rituals of hazing, rushing, and the politics of sororities and fraternities (don’t ask me to explain; I’m English). The ensemble cast includes a young Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito and Lee himself as undergraduates at a historically Black college in Atlanta, inspired by Lee’s university days. What it lacks in a conventional plot, School Daze makes up for by brimming over with style and ideas, fabulous 80s costumes and spectacular musical numbers. Though it deals with serious issues such as colourism, classism and the role of political activism on campuses, it is nonetheless a riotous and joyful viewing experience.

GREGORY’S GIRL (1980)

Gregory’s Girl is a Scottish coming-of-age gem, a romantic comedy set in a comprehensive school outside Glasgow by Bill Forsyth, starring John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn and Clare Grogan, who went on to find fame in post-punk band Altered Images. 16-year-old Gregory likes Dorothy, who replaces him as striker on the school football team, but so do all the other boys. The rivalries on the pitch spill over into crushes and romantic competition, playing out with Forsyth’s characteristic charm. Roger Ebert wrote that “The movie contains so much wisdom about being alive and teenage and vulnerable that maybe it would even be painful for a teenager to see it... Maybe only grown-ups should see this movie. You know, people who have gotten over the pains of unrequited love.” I think everyone should see it.

ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU (2001)

All the pain of adolescence is present in All About Lily Chou-Chou, a Japanese experimental drama written, directed and edited by Shunji Iwai. The nonlinear narrative follows schoolboys Shūsuke and Yūichi through their early years at secondary school, and their obsession with a pop star named Lily Chou-Chou. Deliberately hazy, surreal and confusing, with wild cuts and glowy visuals, this is an early film about the internet which has since achieved beloved cult status – the director created a real website, ‘Lilyholic’, dedicated to the fictional pop star a year before the film came out, which lives on today. At the time of writing, the most recent message on there was posted five hours ago. The top comment on the low-quality version currently on YouTube reads “watching this at 14 is a canon event”. Though I was older, I can imagine how influential this film would have been on me had I seen it at such an age.

OLIVIA (1951)

Directed by Jacqueline Audry in 1951, Olivia is based on Dorothy Bussy’s semi-autobiographical sapphic novel, published under a pseudonym two years earlier. It follows an English girl who arrives at a finishing school in 19th-century France run by two rival headmistresses, Miss Julie and Miss Cara. Earnest Olivia becomes enamoured with the beautiful Miss Julie, who is herself in love with Miss Cara. Desire and jealousy unfold in black-and-white, dazzlingly shot by cinematographer Christian Matras. Capturing the intensity and innocence of youthful desire with sensuality and a hint of camp, Olivia is a landmark lesbian film ripe for rediscovery.

IF… (1968)

Few institutions are as ripe for satire as the English public school, as Lindsay Anderson demonstrates in If…. The film takes place at a private boarding school, that most quintessentially English institution: an old-fashioned world of prefects, punishment and rigid hierarchy. From the beginning of a new term, we follow a group of pupils led by Malcolm McDowell in his film debut, as they become increasingly alienated by the cruelties of school life, leading to eventual insurrection. Anderson and his writers drew on their own unhappy schooldays to portray the fictional College House as a place of institutionalised sadism, designed to punish individuality and breed elite conformist men. Brutal, surreal and still shocking, the 1969 Palme d'Or winner is one of the best films about repression and rebellion, and one of the greatest British films ever made.

WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (1995)

Todd Solondz’s film debut, Welcome to the Dollhouse, offers a vision of school life I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. 12-year-old Dawn Wiener, played by Heather Matarazzo, is an unpopular middle-school pupil in suburban New Jersey. Her school life is hell; she is weird and is subjected to relentless bullying because of it. Though the film is a dark comedy about those familiar humiliations of adolescence – lunch-table trauma, cruel classmates and unrequited crushes – Solondz refuses to make Dawn, who is selfish and occasionally cruel, an entirely sympathetic victim. Welcome to the Dollhouse is an ode to not fitting in, and a film you cannot fail to fall in love with.

PEPPERMINT SODA (1977)

Peppermint Soda follows 13-year-old Anne and her 15-year-old sister Frédérique as they return from their summer holiday and begin another year at school. Set at the strict all-girls Lycée Jules-Ferry, the film follows the sisters through a year of adolescence in 1960s France. Based on Kurys’ own experiences of coming of age, it captures all the anxieties of girlhood, from sisterly rivalries and student activism to periods, stockings and boyfriends. It was the debut film by writer and director Diane Kurys, who claimed to have never held a camera prior to making it. Peppermint Soda is tender and funny, simultaneously functioning as an expression of teenage anxiety and a portrait of growing political unrest in French society.

ELECTION (1999)

It would be wrong to write a list like this without including an American high school classic, and I have voted for Election, Alexander Payne’s 1999 satire. Election stars Matthew Broderick as Jim McAllister, a beloved social studies teacher who becomes increasingly irritated by Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick, a high-achieving and ambitious pupil running for student body president. As Tracy’s ambition brings out McAllister’s own pettiness and competitive streak, he encourages a dimwitted jock to run against her. Intelligent and funny, Payne subverts the conventions of the high school film to comment on American society, turning a seemingly insignificant student election into a political satire about ambition, power and resentment.

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969)

Based on Muriel Spark’s 1961 novel and directed by Ronald Neame, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie stars Maggie Smith as a headstrong teacher at a private girls’ school in 1930s Edinburgh. Jean Brodie is a popular teacher who uses her charm to corrupt her pupils into new ways of thinking, moulded on her own outlandish worldview. Smith’s performance was so strong that the British Board of Film Classification gave the film an X rating in 1969, citing concern that “Maggie Smith’s performance was so powerful that we felt genuine concern about the possibility of young girls being influenced by the philosophy of life that she presented to her pupils” – certainly one of the most charismatic, complex teachers ever seen on screen, and a thrill to watch.