“Alemania” is a quietly compelling coming-of-age melodrama set in Argentina. A teenage girl focuses on one dream — a semester abroad studying in Germany. But her troubled family life in the the country’s 1990s economic downturn threatens that goal. Her first hints to herself that she’s growing up might be realizing that what she wants and she she figures she’s earned may not work out for her.

Lola, played by Maite Aguilar, is an ordinary looking sixteen year-old and a below average student capable of rising to “average” with a little effort. She’s failing most of her courses, including German. That’s no way to make it into a student exchange program in Germany.

But she’s got that goal and she’s certain she can turn it around.

Her parents (María Ucedo, Walter Jakob) may urge her to try harder and study more. But they’re overwhelmed as it is and resigned to her not going. He’s lost his job and one thing their three children, including “Lo” don’t know is that they’ve put the house up for sale.

Lo dutifully helps take care of her younger brother and sits in with mom as they watch sad movies with her grandma. She’s learning to drive and making plans. Her bestie Tati (Gala Gutman) is heading to Germany, and so — Lo resolves — is she. When she’s told by a professor that he’s gotten her a placement in Dresden, in the same German neighborhood Tati is scheduled to stay in, she figures it’s settled.

That’s when she’s introduced to her reality and we’re introduced to why her grades are bad, why her family is in turmoil and why her professor sees this adventure as “an experience that’ll be good for you.”

Those “medications” her dad keeps talking about with her mom are for Lo’s college student sister, Julietta (Miranda de la Serna). She’s a musician studying at a conservatory, but she has manic episodes she cannot control. The biggest obstacle to Lola getting out of here, experiencing the world and getting a break from a life that’s dragging her down is the burden they all share — Julietta.

“When your head is on fire, love in not enough,” her abuela says of her sister (in Spanish with English subtitles). How can Lo leave her family to deal with Julietta without her?

Writer-director María Zanetti’s debut feature is autobiographical in nature, taking us into a childhood on the cusp of womanhood in a world where Walkmen and mix-tapes are the spice of very ordinary teenage lives.

Lo works part time in a print shop, has a crush on Tati’s older brother Alejo (Andy Pruss), who crushes back, calling her “Dolores.” But Tati insists that she lose her virginity in Germany. That is one of the things that could come between them.

Lo falls under the influence of cool older teen Siru (Vicky Peña), her nose-piercing role model.

But as she stumbles into information about her family’s situation and comes to a more adult understanding of her sister’s illness, will she surrender her dreams and the future she is just now starting to form in her head?

Zanetti cast the film well, especially in the case of Ucedo — mercurial, emotionally fraught and dangerous as Julietta. We dread her offer to give Lo a driving lesson in the family car and dread every second of that sequence, as she’s let us see what her “good days” are like, and the bad ones.

Young Aguilar has the less showy role, that of the kid not yet certain of her emotions and how to express them, perhaps too used to being the overlooked middle child with a little brother and an older sister who eats up all of the family’s concern and attention. It’s a performance that invites us to come to her.

For all her agency and efforts to get what she wants, there’s a resignation to Lo. She’s learned that a lot of the time, she’s just supposed to take what little life or her family offers.

“Alemania” is a sweet, understated coming-of-age story, unsurprising in a many ways as it borrows its central who-will-stay/who-will-travel story arc from “American Graffiti,” of all films. What that comedy and what this melodrama remind us is that growing up has responsibilities along with possibilities, and sometimes the hardest choices are the ones you’re not sure if you get to make.

Rating: TV-13+, smoking

Cast: Maite Aguilar, Miranda de la Serna, María Ucedo, Walter Jakob, Gala Gutman and
Vicky Peña

Credits: Scripted and directed by
María Zanetti. A Cinetren release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:28