The Lost Weekend
2023 · 22m · USA
Directed by Charlie Norton
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
On a Cape Cod beach trip in the summer of 2004, a socially awkward teenager confronts his friends' toxic expectations of manhood the weekend before leaving for college. What begins as a hedonistic last hurrah becomes a quiet reckoning with the kind of man he wants to be.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise sounds like earnest coming-of-age therapy until you realize Norton's actually letting the toxic masculinity *breathe* without a moral lecture—that's the subversion, the refusal to distance himself from these boys, and it's braver than it looks.
Norton situates this squarely in the lineage of American male-friendship cinema (think Diner, mid-period Linklater), but the 2004 setting functions as formal constraint rather than nostalgia—a deliberate choice to examine pre-reckoning codes before the culture caught up.
The film lives or dies on Norton's decision to let silences and sideways glances carry the reckoning instead of dialogue—there's a moment where what *isn't* said between these boys becomes the entire architecture of the thing, and that specificity transforms a familiar setup into something genuinely felt.
Reviews
This short film is a must-watch for aficionados of coming-of-age dramas.
The Lost Weekend works quite ably as a short film, though one can easily imagine spending even more time with these characters.
Festivals
- Soho Film Festival 2023
- Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival 2024
- Hofstra Student Film Festival 2024, Best Picture / Golden Lion (Best in Show)
- Smodcastle Film Festival 2024, Nominee — Best Narrative Short
- Woods Hole Film Festival 2025
- Telly Awards 2024, Bronze Telly