On The Circuit

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

Through a composite montage of images from surveillance footage and body-cams, Bill Morrison delivers a chilling political investigation in search of the truth after a Black man is killed by police on the street.

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.

Gestures of love reach further than any demonstration of hate in Mast-del, an experimental poem about forbidden desires, both inside and outside post-revolution Iranian cinema.

Awarded the Principi Award at Lago Film Fest, Simisolaoluwa Akande’s film is an ode to queer people from the Global South.

Refusing any coherence, the campy DIY touches in In-Hyuk Jung’s latest alien-invading sci-fi action-romance are commemorative of 90s New Queer Cinema: feeling out of place is inherently queer.

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.

Through sketch-like animations, Tomek Popakul and Kasumi Ozeki skilfully capture teenage rage and rural isolation in contemporary Poland.

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.

In an attempt to tell a universal story, Nienke Deutz’s The Miracle arrives only at vagueness.

A constant bombardment of stimuli, Stephen Lopez’s dystopian talking fish bromance is all the more interesting for its political undercurrents.

Director-actor Kayije Kagame takes control of her own narrative, shifting our perspectives on Black agency in this blend of magic and social realism.

An unapologetic coming-of-age tale, La Perra dives straight into the paradoxes of female desire. A lonely and sometimes hurtful experience.

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

With an unpretentious approach to existential questions, Finnish filmmaker Hanna Hovitie offers a perfect example of what humility can do in art.

More than a photograph of an event, Isabel Medeiros’ Enlighten works as an evocation. It embraces the overwhelming fact that transformation and degradation are inescapable natural processes.

Not a skateboard story, but a skateboard-inspired film: Cul-de-Sac urges characters and viewers to contemplate life, whatever that entails.

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.

In this Finnish sci-fi love story, Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage meets Philip K. Dick’s philosophies on the existence of android souls.

A haphazard episode of an introspective sitcom: All Gucci My Broski is a wild dive into the existential crisis of a single white man named Jonny.

A visual history of protest and grief, and a chronicle of the public square as an immutable witness to a cycle of revolt.

In his satirical take on reality TV, Sonny Calvento blends campy imagery with melodramatic plot twists.

Francesco Sossai builds a queasy claustrophobia in the neo-giallo The Birthday Party.

Portuguese filmmaker Jorge Jácome crafts something fresh and innovative in the beautifully restrained Shrooms.

Faye Tsakas and Enrique Pedráza-Botero’s incisive documentary incursion into the lives of teenage findoms is also a smart commentary on contemporary American society.

Using archive materials, Chasing the Sun: El Shatt attempts to reconstruct a fragmented memory and touches on historical facts about El Shatt, the largest refugee camp in the Sinai desert in Egypt during WWII.

Feminism and sex triumph at the same time in Flóra Anna Buda’s big winner of the Cannes, Annecy, and Sarajevo short film prizes.

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

In his short film debut, Stephen Vuillemin explores parasocial relationships, highlighting the pervasive feeling of surveillance that has become increasingly prevalent in our digital age.