Strays

Strays is an autobiographical documentary project that traces the people I shared my early twenties with—the rituals we formed together and the spaces we moved through. Rather than attempting to define or represent a single, identifiable “subculture,” the work brings together a heterogeneous constellation of young lives, all marked by a shared difficulty in accepting—or being accepted by—the social expectations of adulthood they have only just entered.The protagonists move across a wide spectrum: squatters, punks, ravers, gender non-conforming sex workers, and individuals navigating mental health struggles and/or substance dependency. What binds them is not a fetishised label or a romanticised marginality, but a tacit recognition of overlapping vulnerabilities, desires, and modes of survival.Through intimacy and proximity, Strays resists classification and moral judgement. It operates instead as a portrait of belonging forged on the margins—where identity remains fluid, community is improvised, and adulthood feels less like an arrival than an unresolved negotiation.