Giles Perkins - 24, Roya Alidjani - 24, Tiana Cantu - 23 | USA

“More and more stories dissecting toxic masculinity have reached the screen in recent years, but few seem to hit the mark in asking the right questions while keeping the story human and relatable. APOLLO is an effective portrayal of the smaller acts of boyish violence inflicted at an age when we’re impressionable, where all we want to do is fit in, even if this means going against our principles.”

Friday Night Spotlight presented by MUBI

Mir Mengi - 21, ZJ Wang - 20, Luis Figueroa Caunedo - 21 | Czech Republic

“Exploring uncertainty is one of my favorite things to do, so it’s always a treat when a film navigates this feeling through a smart and effective use of image and language. Dialogue that weighs little but says lots, stories so expressive you can see them without visual manifestations, and beautifully muted colors allow a hickey to become a footprint—evidence of change in everyday occurrences that would otherwise seem trivial.”

Experience Points (XP)

Sayna Fardaraghi - 23, Julian Wolf Stoller - 20 | UK

“I love to cherish and celebrate films that feel like intimate memories. Helena’s life is not a life I can personally relate to, but the emotional depth behind certain coming-of-age narratives like this one is always a treasure. The fear of growing up is not always in the form of a dress, but perhaps a person, an idea, a place or a word—whatever its shape, what matters is what we make of it.”

Experience Points (XP)

Peyton Tenison - 24, Juan Felipe Díaz - 24, Sam Wolf - 24 | USA

“As an indoor plant who should get out of the house more often, this film taps into a desire for connection beyond what is sometimes a self-imposed social confinement. We connect through the things that make us different, and sometimes all we need is a little push (like potential death by dehydration) to embrace these differences.”

Happy Hour Shorts

Mona D'hertefelt - 21 | Belgium

“Have you seen that video of two men playing jazz for a bunch of cows? This is not that, but I’m just as captivated by this cast of needle-felted cows and their grassroots (ha) activism. Mixing the timeless humor of a fart joke with effective stop motion characterization and subtitled mooing, how could I not be a fan?”

All Around Us presented by ScanDesign Foundation