Coming of age is far from easy, as these competition-nominated films demonstrate. Growing pains and harrowing encounters are par for the course as we navigate the twisting road of identity, family and the inner workings of our developing brains. Our young characters attempt to figure themselves and the world out whilst on a psychedelic Scottish road trip, sloping around suburban London, or veering wildly into Japanese cosplay and the surprisingly competitive world of horse vaulting. You can’t self-actualise without a soundtrack, and music plays a vital role across this programme of loud, stroppy, colourful and always surprising shorts.
Sundance Award alumni Makoto Nagahisa returns with another tale of obsessive adolescent romance in Pisko The Crab Child is in Love, and LSFF alumni Harry Plowden returns with a tale of British teenhood in All Gucci My Broski. Fiona O’Shaughnessy (Nina Forever, Utopia) stars as Mum in the aforementioned Highlands holiday from hell, The Möbius Trip.
