Strange River

Tender, mysterious, and stunningly beautiful, this 16mm-shot coming-of-age story follows a Catalan teenage boy on a life-changing cycling trip with his family along the banks of the Danube.

What begins as a highly relatable tale of a moody teenager reluctantly tagging along on a family holiday soon unfolds into a surprising and intriguing “strange” story about a young man’s first tentative steps onto a path of his own. If your intellectual references are steeped in German Romanticism and modernist architecture, there’s even more to enjoy here – but regardless, this is a confidently queer coming-of-age tale, told with elegance and rich lyrical qualities. An impressively mature and fully realized feature debut by Jaume Claret Muxart.

• Johan Blomqvist