From left, Liv LeMoyne, Mira Barkhammar, and Mira Grosin, the leads in We Are the Best! (Toronto International Film Festival)

Lukas Moodysson’s returns after a four-year break with his sixth feature, We are the Best!, an uplifting and original coming-of-age comedy that captures the energy of his 1998 debut, Show Me Love.

1982, Stockholm—androgynous 13-year old best friends, bespectacled Bobo and mohawked Klara, are outsiders frustrated by their conformist contemporaries. Excluded and patronized by the older boys that dominate their youth club, the feisty, passionate punk fans form their own band, even though everybody tells them that punk is dead. With no musical skills or instruments between them, their youthful spirit take them only so far. After some resistance, the girls persuade social outcast Hedvig, a talented classical guitarist and a shy, committed Christian, to join their band.

Solemn Bobo, the only child of divorced parents, lives a latchkey life with her self-absorbed mother. Petite, powerhouse Klara is embarrassed by her liberal parents, while her pompous big brother has rejected punk for Joy Division. Last but not least, level-headed Hedvig is inhibited by her devout, single mother’s expectations and constrained by her responsibilities for her younger sister.

Between rehearsals for a battle of the bands competition to perform their only song, the protest track “Hate the Sport,” the three defiant friends roam the streets looking for adventure. After they befriend an all-boy punk band, romantic rivalries jeopardize their friendships before the film erupts with frenetic punk action.

Moodysson’s casting of unknown actors as his leads is perfect. The chemistry between the three teenagers, each with a very different temperament, is genuine and utterly infectious. Mira Barkhammar plays Bobo, whose early-teen insecurities provide the film’s emotional core. Mira Grosin is wonderfully expressive as Klara, whose indomitable and guileless energy drives the band. Liv LeMoyne’s reserved character, Hedvig, undergoes the greatest transition, liberated from a closed-up Christian to a rebel without a cause.

Moodysson adapted We Are the Best! from his wife Coco’s graphic novel, Never Goodnight, a fictionalized account of her teenage years as a punk rocker. While she gave him free rein in his treatment of the source material, and he has changed elements of the story, it retains the spirit, resonant details, and key scenes. It will have you laughing out loud and squirming with embarrassment.

In one of those scenes, in a quest to convert Hedvig to punk, Klara cuts off Hedvig’s thick, long, blonde hair to match Klara’s mohawk and Bobo’s crop. The deed done, Klara counters Hedvig’s horror with the retort, “Look at it this way: it’ll grow back.” In another encounter, two teens—who provide a hilarious double act as two unreconstructed, aspiring 1970’s rock gods—try to teach the “girl band” how to play guitar, only to be humiliated by Hedvig’s precocious talent.

Forced to care for herself because her Mum works at a pub, Bobo resourcefully cooks fish fingers in the toaster and hides from adult issues by plugging into headphones, saved by the grace of music. In one scene, Klara reminds, with total conviction,  a depressed Bobo what’s good in her life, “You’re in the world’s greatest band,” despite their lack of talent, instruments, or repertoire.

With great comic timing and affectionate, Moodysson captures the exuberance of youth. It’s a film about self-liberation that celebrates the intense highs and lows of friendships, the confusion and chaos of growing up, first boyfriends, embarrassing parents, jealousies, and skewed teenage logic. It’s an immersive experience. Ulf Brantas’s 35mm cinematography captures the passion of the three diminutive leads with a kinetic energy, while the Scandinavian punk soundtrack will have you singing “Brezhnev, Reagan. F*** off!” long after you’ve left the theater.

Moodysson has created a wonderful, infectious, and uplifting antidote to the limited portrayals of female teenagers and their friendships in mainstream cinema. It is a refreshing, honest, and touching rebellious comedy about an intense, transitory time of life before the bubble of childhood innocence bursts. We Are the Best! should be compulsory viewing for all teenagers and their parents.