On The Circuit

To be or not to be in the pantry? That is the question haunting Luis Hindman’s Magid / Zafar, in which a queer South Asian man is constantly code-switching to fit in.

Exploring empathy and guilt, Oscar Bøe’s protagonist’s growing self-awareness mirrors the cultural blind spots surrounding sexual assault.

Elegant and deeply human, Atsushi Hirai’s Oyu is a carefully constructed homecoming haunted by loss.

Based on the real-life story of one of the filmmaker’s friends, Burul sheds a light on the brutal practice of bride kidnapping and amplifies the voices of oppressed Kyrgyz girls.

A father takes his son to the funfair on Halloween. What should be the stuff of childhood dreams becomes, instead, the therapy material of adolescent trauma in Rachel Walden’s gut-punch roadtrip.

No hollow performances of masculinity to mask the realities of grief in Guillermo García López’s Roma family tale. By exploring insecurities, his coming-of-age story becomes a metaphysical quest for reassurance.

All the markers of artfulness seem to be in place, and yet this self-proclaimed study of empathy quickly wears thin.

Kevin Biele’s short is full of subtlety: a quiet “no” has never sound so powerful.

Olga Kosanović sheds light on an immigrant’s reality in present-day Austria, a land where an Eastern European individual is forced to, figuratively speaking, move mountains to endure.

Aziz Zoromba’s Simo offers insights into the dynamics of a culturally diverse family, but leaves out the most meaningful conversations.

Yana Eresina’s family drama on toxic masculinity and femicide forces us to solve puzzle after puzzle.