The Next Great Directors Are Still Paying Tuition

One of my favourite festival clips has to be a talkback led by Kevin Smith for one of my favourite movies of all time, the 2018 horror-revenge film Mandy. In that session, he threw the term “masterful” around a lot when describing its director Panos Cosmatos, who awkwardly but earnestly would ignore or reject the title. And honestly, maybe he was right to. Mandy isn’t a perfect film by any means. Its pacing drags, its dialogue stumbles, its tone is all over the place. But to me, those imperfections are exactly what make it powerful, they feel like the fingerprints of a filmmaker fully in control of his own vision.

Cinema history loves its pantheon of “masters”: Kubrick, Scorsese, Tarkovsky, Varda. Directors whose films have been so polished that they start to gleam. But mastery, to me, isn’t about polish, it’s about command of vision. It’s about someone so deeply attuned to what they’re trying to express that the rough edges become part of the expression itself. Mastery can be awkward, uneven, maybe even ugly, as long as it’s honest. At least that’s what Cosmatos has shown me through his work.

That idea was echoing in my mind recently at POV’s 35th annual screening, a festival celebrating the work of UBC’s Film Production students. This year, the event took place at the Rio Theatre, a screen that's hosted legends, now highlighting the next generation of filmmakers from my alma mater. It was there that I saw Amor Eterno, Joshua Brad-Lee Garrido’s sophomore short film that’s a semi-surrealist exploration of love and loss. Maybe it was the big screen amplifying its effect or maybe I was already emotionally disarmed by the other powerful films that came before it, but I sat there with wet cheeks and a stifled breath, shaken in the best way, feeling like I had just witnessed something that understood itself completely.

That thought lingered long after the screening ended. Amor Eterno is one of the many reminders of why I fell in love with filmmaking in the first place, the way a story can feel so deeply personal yet entirely universal, even when told through an abstract lens. But how can this low budget student film from a relatively green filmmaker make me feel the same way as a big budget epic from a seasoned vet? Can I really call Josh a “master” of his craft when the film feels so subjective? It made me think about what “mastery” really means in an indie setting, where limits force creativity and sincerity matters more than perfection.

Because I love to argue (and really want to hammer home my point), I’m going to play devil’s advocate and argue against myself, addressing a couple criticism’s a cinephile might have of the film. My goal here isn’t to highlight its “flaws”, but rather show how they might actually be the film's strengths and culminate to create a clear distinct vision.

“The film grain is clearly artificial. The image is overexposed. You can see the noise of the sensor.”

Sure. Technically, that’s true. But this clearly isn’t a film obsessed with giving you a clean image, it’s a film about sensation. It’s about touch, smell, sound, and memory. The visual texture is the emotional texture. The grain and noise imbue the image with life, like it’s breathing with the characters. The overexposure softens edges, creating a hazy intimacy, the kind of visual warmth that makes even loss feel tender. The image feels alive BECAUSE it’s imperfect. And besides, I dare you to show me another film that even comes close to looking like this one. Josh and his cinematographer, Gabe Sanchez, likely used a camera and lens setup that’s been used countless times, yet somehow managed to create something unique that feels so specific to the world of this film. To me, that’s a technical feat worth celebrating.

“There’s no continuity. Lighting is all over the place, the set is never the same, and the film constantly shifts in mood and tone.”

Taken in isolation, I can understand that criticism. Even while watching, I caught myself thinking the same thing. But this is exactly why you should always finish a film before judging it, especially one that challenges you in the moment. Amor Eterno isn’t meant to give you one clean, consistent image; it’s a mosaic of moments, each showing a different facet of this relationship. Love isn’t a fixed thing, it’s an evolving process that sometimes flows naturally and other times bends to fit the people and places around it (in this case, a lo-fi karaoke session at the end of the world). While part of me wanted to linger in those beautiful moments a little longer, that would go against what the film is trying to do, which is to show both the warmth of memory and the sting of reality.

“It’s too slow. In sixteen minutes, not much actually happens.”

Maybe not much happens in the traditional sense. But love isn’t about events, it’s about moments. It’s about stillness, touch, and the unbearable awareness of time slipping by. Amor Eterno stretches those moments because that’s what it feels like to truly love someone, to want to stay in that exact space forever. The slowness isn’t indulgence; it’s honesty. When you’ve felt that kind of connection, would you really want to skip to the next scene?

“It’s dumb and I don’t get it.”

And maybe you never will, but does that mean it failed? Some films don’t want to be understood, they want to be felt. You don’t need to know the character’s name to recognize their grief. You don’t need to know what city they’re in to sense the air around them. Amor Eterno speaks in a language beyond exposition, it’s pure emotion, rhythm, and texture. It trusts that you’ll meet it halfway, that you’ll feel what can’t be neatly explained.

Watching Josh’s film, it really cemented the point that mastery isn’t about perfection, it’s about conviction. It’s about trusting your instincts so deeply that even your mistakes feel intentional. Just like what Cosmatos did with Mandy, Josh embraces the rawness. The unfiltered emotions that make cinema feel human, even behind a thick layer of aesthetics. I feel genuinely honoured to have experienced this auteur at the very beginning of his career and I’m continually inspired by filmmakers like him who continue to create work that matters so deeply to them that they persevere no matter the limitations or obstacles they might face.

So maybe the next “master filmmaker” won’t have a Cannes premiere or a Criterion restoration. Maybe they’re still paying tuition, editing in a classroom at midnight, crafting something that’s too strange, too personal, too real to fit the mold. But at the end of the day, mastery doesn’t come from mastering the tools, it comes from mastering yourself.