Through doctored images of sports competitions, Charles-André Coderre addresses issues of obsession, competitiveness and the agony of loss, all things related to mental toughness. He reappropriates the body as art material, a vector of pure motion, understated eroticism and transcendent beauty through experimental abstraction.

A group of young men travel on foot to visit the ruins of an ancient Roman fort in Galicia and its adjoining thermal baths. They banter, as boys often do, and talk about streamers and all sorts of online activity, particularly a war game that they have been obsessing about. Indeed they have crossed the border from Portugal to come here and relax after their “battle.” Daylight wanes, they quiet down. Two of them get into the bath and begin an intimate conversation. Eventually, other men also step into the thermal baths and speak in hushed tones, questioning the wages of war and being away from their families, as though they have been transported to a scene from 2,000 years ago. Gabriel Azorín’s debut feature is a spellbinding look at male camaraderie, where cinematic time breaks loose from historical time, and at the centre of which is a site that bore witness to many men’s deepest fears and affections.

Art student Adnan spends a summer in New York City, cat-sitting at his uncle’s cozy apartment and starting an internship at a nearby gallery. In a city bristling with possibilities, he avails of its quickest pleasures, hooking up and ordering takeaway, and opens himself up to sensuous, earthly delights that often come with youth and beauty. Moving across time and between intimate encounters, Adnan is taken by the poetry of a food delivery rider, the homoerotic embroidery of an artist, the magical presence of a satyr, and the intricate emotions of a lover. Similar to his 2019 debut End of the Century, writer and director Lucio Castro captures the latitudes of queerness in the most quietly arresting and thrilling way possible.