In the heart of Silicon Valley, the Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival 2025 continues its rapid expansion, with this year’s lineup featuring an impressive 200-plus titles—spanning feature-length films, shorts, documentaries, music videos, and television. The Cinequest Cinejoy Virtual Film Festival, running from March 24-31, has a lot of A-list star power, including films starring Pedro Pascal, Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, Chappell Roan, and Gillian Anderson, while still maintaining a strong emphasis on Bay Area stories and filmmakers. As the festival grows, the projects become increasingly ambitious and polished, offering audiences a glimpse into the industry's future and the next generation of filmmakers.
In curating this lineup, I selected a handful of titles that I believe exemplify the industry's ingenuity—particularly showcasing the rising influence of a new wave of young artists, as well as one older film that stood for these values that premiered more than a hundred years ago.
These filmmakers wear their inspirations on their sleeves, yet they have been given the freedom to define their art on their own terms, unbound by the constraints of the past. Some succeed more than others, but each film reflects the sensibilities of Hollywood’s most coveted demographic—the 18-35 audience—as we witness the past continue to shape the present. Some of these artists are on the rise, while others represent an earlier generation ushering in the filmmakers of tomorrow.
BAR
Whenever I see the world of culinary arts displayed on television shows like Hell’s Kitchen or The Bear, I always think to myself that I’m fortunate not to be involved in this line of work. BAR takes audiences inside the world and competition of prestige mixology. This documentary follows a group of five people from across the United States who travel to New York in order to compete in elite bartending. BAR is both a film about competition and community. To win at the highest level, one must be able to be pushed to the limits by their opponents. A mutual respect and admiration arises as they compete to be the best. The results are thrilling.
Ultimately, the documentary captures the necessary drive to achieve at the highest level and the influences that artists learn from one another to build their skill. These bartenders are artists and the bar is their artform, telling a story of skill, creativity, and the pursuit of perfection.
I See the Demon
On the night of her surprise birthday party, Lucy begins to unravel despite her friend’s insistence that nothing is wrong. Yet, despite the party atmosphere, Lucy cannot get over the fact that something sinister lays dormant as her paranoia worsens. Directed by Jacob Lees Johnson, I See the Demon is an exploration of the intrusive nature of the darkness we push down to survive in this science-fiction horror-thriller.
As Lucy (played wonderfully by Alexis Zollicoffer) loses sense of reality, the film expands its scope as the audience is introduced to a world far more sinister and bizarre with every winding step. While the ending leaves more questions than it answers, I See the Demon is an impressive showcase of acting all around, including a memorable performance by Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder, that balances the surreal with the everyday trauma of life.
Chappell Roan - Casual
The new generation of pop stardom has arrived in Chappell Roan, and she is unfiltered, unafraid, and ready to party. After her latest album The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess took the summer (and internet) by storm, Chappell Roan has quickly become something of a sensation within the pop community, with her album earning her six Grammy nominations, including a win for Best New Artist. Inspired by renaissance art, queer pop culture -- including drag shows -- mixed with her Midwestern upbringing, and a personality that echoes back to 1970s punk, Roan’s music is a celebration of being young and being yourself in a world that frowns on people living their true selves, as reflected in her newest music video Casual.
The song follows Roan and the excitement of a new relationship that eventually sours as her partner refuses to reciprocate emotional intimacy. In her music video, the story follows Roan meeting a siren by the ocean with whom she brings home and quickly becomes physical with, only for the sea creature to eventually get bored and return to the ocean. Featuring incredible production design, and incredible make-up work that visualizes the transformation Roan undertakes in appearance and lifestyle to be worthy of the monster’s affection, only to be left abandoned. In describing the concept of the video, Roan said she envisioned this story as, “Aquamarine, but like, gay” a reference sure to elicit a visceral response of anyone coming of age in the early 2000s.
Homewrecker
At some point in time, American society deemed it OK that Gen X and Gen Z would just never be allowed to afford a home. Even a couple holding stable jobs isn’t enough anymore. Who can blame two young people if they take matters into their own hands to achieve the unachievable of not living in an apartment for the rest of their lives? Besides, it’s not like it will hurt anyone - right?
Homewrecker follows Megan, a happily married school teacher, whose mother agrees to help her and her husband Liam buy a house. Those dreams of domestic paradise quickly shatter when Megan’s stepfather gets into legal trouble, forcing her mom to go back on her promise. Devastated by the news, the young couple decides that they must frame the stepfather of cheating through the use of deepfake technology, so as to get Megan’s mother to divorce him. Quick-paced, tense, and outrageously funny, Homewrecker explores the wonders and dangers of new technology, as the young couple must grapple with how far they are willing to go to buy a house.
The film delves into the dangers and ethical consequences of new technologies. The couple’s antics become more outrageous as they wrestle with the consequences of their actions as the situation grows more complex and pushes their relationship to new levels. With its quick wit, Homewrecker shines a light on the modern struggle for homeownership, capturing the lengths some will go to in order to secure a piece of the American Dream, even if it means breaking a few legal and moral boundaries along the way.
Time Travel is Dangerous!
What happens when two women in search of making a quick buck have access to a time machine? Well, it could mean the destruction of the very space-time continuum that results in the destruction of our universe. That is the predicament in which best friends Ruth and Megan find themselves when they begin time traveling to take objects from the past and sell them in their vintage shop in London. One day, it all goes wrong as they uncover a dark secret of the universe, known as the void, in which no one returns.
Equally inspired by the great science-fiction works of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and balancing that tone with the comedic silliness of Monty Python, Time Travel is Dangerous! is an outrageously absurd story of the dangers of taking what doesn’t belong to you. Directed by Chris Reading, this film is able to balance the wacky with the complexity of human relationships for a fun story chockfull of amusing gags and situations.
Nosferatu (1922)
Over 100 years ago, German audiences were introduced to the monster of nightmares: Count Orlok, who brought with him the plague. A silent German Expressionist film, Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror is an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and a staple of the horror community due to the monster’s visually striking, creepy appearance, which gave many children, including myself, nightmares. This past December, filmmaker Robert Eggers reimagined the story of the count for modern audiences, featuring far more satanic symbolism, and a remarkable attention to detail. Thus, when I saw the festival was screening the original film, I was eager to re-enter Transylvania.
Directed by German filmmaker F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu is a testament of universal storytelling that overcomes generations of growing technological improvement in movie-making. The film’s stillness and silence, a relic of the time, only causes the horror to feel more off-putting. Burned frames appear on the screen. which are so startling they play almost like jump scares. The music is so instrumental to conveying the emotion, that it's hard to imagine any actual dialogue. This story is a testament to a visual creator’s ingenuity and talent that it is a reminder to filmmakers both old and new that artistic merit doesn’t mean “the most expensive” or the “most complex” -- rather it is found at an ability to transcribe the vision one has in their mind and communicate that to the screen, no matter how big or small your vision may seem.
Nosferatu, like Cinequest, serves as a reminder that storytelling is not limited by technical advancement, rather creativity and risk taking. Technology may be ever-changing, but boldness stands the test of time.
Author Bio:
Ben Friedman is a contributing writer and film critic at Highbrow Magazine.
For Highbrow Magazine