Lorelei Linklater and Patricia Arquette in Boyhood. Then you get there yourself and think: oh shit, I’m making this up as I go along.” He could easily have called it Parenthood, he adds, were it not for the fact that the title had already been taken.

As kids, you think that your parents are fixed entities.

It’s about figuring your life out as a kid and figuring out how to parent. “I always described it as a film about growing up,” Linklater says now.

In its intimate fashion, it covers pretty much everything. Patricia Arquette won an Oscar, a Screen Actors Guild award, a Bafta and a Golden Globe for her role as Mason’s struggling single mum, Olivia. Ethan Hawke co-stars as the free-spirited dad who eventually straightens up and settles down. Its secret weapon is the young Ellar Coltrane, whose character, Mason, we see moving from kindergarten to college, but the picture has other strings to its bow. The cast and crew gathered for a few days of shooting each summer. For anyone who missed Boyhood the first time around, Linklater’s picture is a time-lapse family story.

I heart 80s