STRAW 2025: A Mother’s Silence Was Louder Than a Siren
A haunting look at grief, survival, and a mother’s quiet collapse in a world that never gave her room to fall.

Three 13-year-olds start a detective agency and in solving their first case, learn about friendship and courage.
A haunting look at grief, survival, and a mother’s quiet collapse in a world that never gave her room to fall.
"La Noria" deftly subverts audience expectations as it explores childhood grief, anxieties, and pain. The award-winning short shows us that often our monsters are often sprung from our darkest places.
The “gay best friend”, an age-old trope, has been done in countless films and television series. Ranging from one-note (Sex and the City's Stanford and Mario) to nuanced (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's Tituss), the gay best friend exists to support and advise the main protagonist, with their conflicts swept to the side.
The Slumber Party Massacre wonderfully combines the suspense of its horror with its commentary on gender, creating a memorable slasher classic that began a horror trilogy entirely written and directed by women.
Love, Simon (2018) based on the book “Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda” (by Becky Albertalli) is a teen LGBTQ+ rom-com with themes of longing to find others with similar struggles, and ultimately is a story of acceptance of identity from those around you, and most importantly, from yourself.