North Sea Texas

North Sea Texas (Noordzee, Texas, 2011) is a Belgian coming-of-age romance you can watch online on iFILM. Director Bavo Defurne sets it on a faded stretch of the Flemish coast — dunes, a traveling fair, the smell of the sea. Fifteen-year-old Pim figured out who he is early, and he carries it quietly.

His mother, a former small-town beauty queen, plays accordion at a roadside bar called Texas and barely registers her son. Pim drifts next door, where he falls — not for the girl who pines after him, but for her older brother. There's almost no dialogue here; the film works through glances and silences, and the ache of a first crush that may go unanswered. If loud teen melodramas wear you out, this hushed little picture is the antidote. Stream North Sea Texas online on iFILM.