Not many coming-of-age movies are able to tap into a moment with as much honesty, awareness, humor and heartbreak as Eighth Grade, one of the breakout hits of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, and a film that will likely go on to be among the year’s best in this genre, if not the best.

Writer-director Bo Burnham’s tale of an awkward eighth-grade girl struggling to fit into a world of Snaps and Instas and YouTube celebrities does an incredible job of capturing the complexity and anxiety of a generation growing up online. Featuring a cast full of real 13 year olds – and an astonishingly authentic performance from newcomer Elsie Fisher -- Burnham’s experience as a popular comedian and YouTube personality helps elevate Eighth Grade above similar films like it, ultimately delivering one of the most memorable teen movies since the John Hughes era.

At a time when lots of teen movies are trying to find ways to evoke comparisons to Hughes’ best films, Eighth Grade succeeds most because, like Hughes’ most notable work in the genre, it understands not just its characters, but their world. It knows how to balance the funny moments with the awkward ones; the important milestones with the horrifying tales that plague those confronting an evolutionary shift in their childhood.

It’s a movie that so delicately and deliberately attempts to capture that moment in a kid’s life when they’re trying to bid farewell to the person they were while coming to terms with the person they’re about to become.

It’s a moment we’ve all faced, and Burnham slices into it with precision, poking at all aspects of coming of age in the YouTube generation with the confidence of someone who’s lived this and knows this and comes at it from a place of love and respect.

That, plus he pays lots of attention to the details.

Every random “like” that fumbles out of a character’s mouth was written into the script. Burnham manages to pin some of the film’s most emotional moments on a Spongebob Squarepants figure, and he isn’t afraid to put his adorably sweet and innocent main character into scary situations that will test her and change her, and inject the movie with an extra level of depth you don’t see coming. Burnham also sprinkles in oddballs and knuckleheads; kids and conversations so well drawn you will swear they were ripped right from your own childhood, regardless of the era you grew up in.

That might be the most impressive thing about Eighth Grade – that it functions as an exceptional portrait of teen life in 2018 while also leaning into the patterns that have connected 13 year olds to one another for decades. One particular moment – when a set of older high schoolers are quizzing a middle schooler on how old she was when Snapchat happened – felt like a conversation every generation has (just replace Snapchat with cell phones or DVDs or color television). And the film’s main framing device – a set of YouTube videos the lead character makes about how to overcome the trials and tribulations of growing up – are really no different than a girl writing in her diary, except these days a kid’s diary is public and shareable. (There’s an entirely different Sundance film called Assassination Nation that digs into that part of teendom with horrific gusto.)

Eighth Grade just gets it right. Its look, its feel, its energy and its deep love and understanding of its characters and their world is what truly makes it the best coming-of-age movie for right now. Its rich messages about embracing your inner self-confidence are instantly admirable, and its dorky characters you’ll no doubt want to revisit for multiple viewings.

This is a movie that sticks -- and while time will dictate where Eighth Grade fits within the pantheon of coming-of-age films, it’ll be no surprise to see an entire generation embrace this as one of their first classics.