Can lost and lonely college boy conquer the homesick blues?

THERE have been some terrific films about the misery of homesickness. I loved Brooklyn (2015), in which Saoirse Ronan played a naive Irish girl trying to find her feet in 1950s New York City. Now we can add a splendid rom-com, Freshman Year ())))*, 15, 100 mins), to the list.

Alex (the excellent Cooper Raiff, pictured, who also wrote and directed) is a tall, handsome 19-year-old who doesn’t look like the sort of young man who would find himself floundering in his first year at college. But he is a sensitive soul, desperately missing his mother and sister, who are 1,500 miles away at home in Texas.

Alex shares a room with a hard-drinking stoner who deems him a loser, his only friend and confidante the cuddly stuffed animal he has carried with him through childhood, whose advice is represented by subtitles. Then comes salvation, or so it seems, as a sophomore girl, Maggie (Dylan Gelula), shows an interest in him.

They sleep together and it looks as if she will be his path to happiness. But nothing is that straightforward.

None of this is wildly original but it’s still a really engaging film: funny, moving, exquisitely observed and, by all accounts, semi-autobiographical. If you’ve ever been homesick or have children who have suffered, it will doubtless strike a chord.

Even if not, it’s well worth seeing. And Raiff is a talent worth watching.

■ ALSO worth seeing, albeit for strikingly different reasons, is Getting Away With Murder(s) ())))*, 15A, 175 mins), a powerful and important documentary by filmmaker David Wilkinson.

It re-examines the horrors of the Holocaust, in particular those perpetrated at Auschwitz, in the context of the alarmingly high number of Nazis who were never brought to justice.

Fascinatingly, Wilkinson talks not just to survivors but also to the remarkable Ben Ferencz, now 101 and the only surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials.

■ FRESHMAN Year is available on all major streaming platforms; Getting Away With Murder(s) is in cinemas now.