Summary: An introverted teenage girl tries to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth grade year before leaving to start high school.
Director: Bo Burnham
Stars: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson
Duration: 93 min.
Themes: anxiety, puberty, social media
Since its release last year, Eighth Grade, has been praised for its sense of humble realism. This directorial debut of young comedian Bo Burnham portrays the life of a fourteen-year-old in a funny, yet endearing way. This film could be used to show cultural differences between the students themselves and peers from another country. They can list the problems and choices a typical American teenager encounters and check whether they run in the same ones.
The main theme of this film, though, is anxiety: an everyday issue in teenagers’ lives all over the world. Eighth Grade deals with this topic in a realistic but humourous way, which makes it perfectly suitable in an EFL classroom.
Protagonist Kayla wants to become a YouTube vlogger (although she hasn’t had her breakthrough just yet). Maybe as a creative task, the pupils can talk about something they’re interested in / scared of in a vlog and upload it to the internet. This type of exercise allows the students to develop their digital literacy, which becomes increasingly important in this era of technology.
Films in the classroom 