In The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene wrote: "There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in." This mesmerizing film is about such a moment in the lives of Danny (Noah Taylor) and Freyda (Leone Carmen), two teenagers who have been friends since childhood in a small Australian town. Their relationship has been stitched together with a thousand threads of feeling and mutual experiences. But now it is unraveling: Freyda has sexually matured and is dating Trevor (Ben Mendelsohn), an athletic and rebellious youth.

Writer and director John Duigan has made the best film about youth in many a moon. The Australian Film Institute showered it with five awards. With razor-sharp accuracy and poignancy, Duigan explores the peculiar anguish and magic of youth including sexual yearning, rebelliousness, the zest for experimentation with ideas and ideals, the search for hero figures and family roots, the necessity of forging an identity, and the need to come to terms with death, prejudice and human duplicity.

Although this drama is set in Australia during the 1960s, there is a universality to the experience of the three protagonists which ought to resonate with everyone. The Year My Voice Broke is the most perceptive original film about growing up since Stand By Me.