Fantasia Fest 2025: Find Your Friends Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Writer-director Izabel Pakzad arrives at Fantasia with the world premiere of her feature debut, Find Your Friends, a frantic thriller led by a group of revelers on a girls trip to Joshua Tree. After a traumatic experience, Amber’s (Howard) hesitation grows towards the constant partying and precarious situations, leading to violent circumstances and turmoil in the friend group. She highlights how quick and easy things can go wrong as the women are engulfed in the drinking, drugs, and sex that comes with Gen Z adults partying in the present day.

The film’s opening scene firmly encapsulates these predicaments as it opens with this friend group at a rowdy daytime boat party. When a make-out session goes too far for Amber’s comfort, her friends immediately have her back as they get publicly shamed off the boat. Pakzad notably establishes a congenial camaraderie as these women discuss their elaborate escapades with the vulgarity and openness of personalities who have been connected together for years. While elegantly woven as a tight-knit group of free-spirited women, she struggles to steady the enrichment and involvement of each individual character. Between Amber’s advocation, Lavinia’s (Thorne) bluntness, Lola’s (Chloe Cherry) comedic relief, Zosia (Moreno) and Maddy’s (Sophia Ali) grounded behavior, the latter two women are often sidelined especially in hindsight of the climactic aftermath and the importance of keeping friends together.

Shot on location in Joshua Tree, Pazkad uses this opportunity to outline the isolation facing the friend group in the empty desert. Their carousing behavior proves to be much more dangerous when fewer witnesses are around to prevent predatory and violent behavior from vile men in this remote town. The director methodically builds up this problematic behavior and restrains it at key moments that leaves enough room to understand Amber’s trauma and justified paranoia that often gets brushed off with gaslighting. The powerful instances when these friends are able to resolve the tension and stand strong are where audiences see the film’s brutal and grounded violence, leading to a satisfying conclusion.

Overall, Find Your Friends offers an interesting dive into the modern world of reveling and the elevated risks that come with that lifestyle. While not always equitable in characterization, writer-director Izabel Pazkad builds an excellent camaraderie through her film’s group of free-spirited women that not only leads to brutal cinematic satisfaction, but highlights the importance of understanding trauma in the face of potential danger.

still courtesy of Fantasia Festival

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Costa Christoulas

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