I’m certain that students all over Cambridge would agree: film and TV is the necessary fuel to our fire. Nothing else will ever quite match the state of inner peace that a late-night encounter with Netflix brings. Though there is only a rare, and often brief, window of time in the day for us to curl up in bed and completely switch off, those late hours of the night are much cherished (and much-needed, after the third, consecutive, gruelling eight-hour slog at the library in exam term.) Since it is clear just how meaningful film and TV is to us exhausted students, we thought we would share those which have most defined our time at Cambridge so far…

Jess Gotterson

Adults, an FX comedy series about five friends in their 20s living together for the first time while fumbling through the early stages of adulthood, instantly springs to my mind. Though this show will leave you in stitches, it simultaneously manages to address the serious anxieties of people our age. Who here hasn’t been forced into the sudden realisation that some people from their past are blatantly awful, like Kyle, an old high-school acquaintance who makes the national news for sexual harassment. Severely intoxicated, the group try fixing their broken water heater in episode one – a particularly relatable situation that once involved too much wine after a formal and us morphing into emergency plumbers to unblock our clogged toilet (more by luck than skill). Then there’s Billie, who develops rectal bleeding from stressing over her job; as much as I’d like to think that this would never happen to me, it could, especially with the kind of high-pressure environment that Cambridge cultivates. I also can’t pretend that dropping an AirTag into an attractive man’s bag isn’t exactly the kind of unhinged thing me and my friends would do… As housemates, they later host their first ‘proper’ dinner party, where the chicken turns out to be raw, much like that time in first year we all attempted Christmas dinner in a gyp. When the group finally decide to trawl through their backlog of mail, they realise Paul Baker’s visa is expiring – eerily similar to the moment I missed a supervision after neglecting my Outlook inbox for too long. The friendships which see these newly turned adults navigate their messy lives, everyone figuring things out together, are exactly what my time in Cambridge has been all about.

Jen Shaftoe

The first film that comes to mind is one of the most influential of my adolescent years: Educating Rita. Originally a stage comedy by British playwright Willy Russell, it follows protagonist Susan (‘Rita’) White, a working-class Liverpudlian hairdresser who enrols in an Open University literature course to broaden her horizons. Rita is an endlessly endearing, incredibly powerful and spirited character, with her 80s perm and clacking heels that sound over the university grounds as she navigates her way to the cynical, alcoholic office of Frank Bryant. Although from two very different classes, upbringings and worlds, their professional relationship of mentor-student grows into a heart-warming friendship that leaves you at once struck with warmth and an enduring melancholy. One scene feels particularly poignant now: Rita is in a pub and she feels alone, even while surrounded by her friends and family, when she describes a distinct feeling of inadequacy, not in herself, but in her circumstances. A song begins to play on the radio and the whole pub joins in until Rita notices: “‘when I turned around, me mother had stopped singin’, and she was cryin’. I said, ‘Why are you cryin’, Mother? ’ And she said, ‘There must be better songs to sing than this.’ And I thought, yeah – that’s what I’m trying to do, isn’t it? Sing a better song’”. We are all at university for a reason, and that reason is summed up well in this moment of glaring truth, that we want for more; more discovery, more freedom, more passion, more knowledge; to sing a better song. When the credits roll, a question emerges: what song will you sing?

Ell Heeps

A very unseasonable choice, but Love Actually has frequently provided solace to me when Cambridge has got too tough. Let the record show that I’m a longstanding fan of this film (yes, I’m aware it’s aged quite poorly), but I got a new perspective on it watching it with my college wife at the end of our first Michaelmas. Cambridge was still so new to us, and I was still figuring out who I really wanted to ‘be’ in my time here, but getting to share what is such a Christmas staple for my family with a new friend reassured me for the first time that I might eventually feel at home here. As someone who had always been a diehard supporter of the Hugh Grant/Martine McCutcheon storyline, discovering that some people watch Love Actually for the mess that is Andrew Lincoln pining after Keira Knightley was… eye-opening. It was the perfect way to round off my first eight weeks in Cambridge, and I’m sure next year, when both my college wives have abandoned me for their respective years abroad, I’ll find myself putting it on again, trying to recall the magic it carried in first year.

Georgia Gooding

In the loosest sense of the word, the ‘film’ that defines my time at uni is none other than John Mulaney’s Netflix stand-up special Kid Gorgeous. With his signature dapper look and classic old-timey cadence, Mulaney is (arguably) at his peak as he prances around the stage lamenting “the worst financial decision [he] ever made”: going to university. Now, I don’t personally feel this way (yet – I am an MMLer!), but in the wake of my first-year exams, something about his comedy resonated. Whether that was simply because my work was done and I could binge-watch to my heart’s content, or because the unserious seriousness of uni – summed up as he jokes “I paid $120,000 for someone to tell me to read Jane Austen, and then I didn’t” – had finally become clear to me. I loved Cambridge, and I hoped I’d done well in my exams, but I was also just a first year and they literally didn’t matter – and now I was eating pesto pasta in bed in the middle of the day while my flatmates continued to work their asses off. It was legitimately one of the best weeks of my life, Schadenfreude epitomised, and after eight months of imposter syndrome I could finally rest knowing I’d done enough to make myself proud. Uncovering the treasure trove that is Mulaney’s comedy was simply the cherry on top.

Dylan Ingram

One of my friends bought a cheap projector back in Freshers’ Week and we would watch films on it in big groups, sprawled across his room. A lot of our conversations at dinner involved wrangling over what to watch next; while sitting beneath the vaulted roof of Peterhouse’s dining hall, I advocated for Star Wars’ political thriller Andor. I already loved the show, and this was a chance to share it with my friends. It’s an intense production, filled with subtle dangers and chaotic, violent resolution. On a projector, surrounded by my friends, this tension and release burnt off the screen. It was fun to watch their faces through every escalating moment of each episode. There is something deeply affirming about sharing something you love with the new people you have come to love. Sometimes, when you rewatch a film, you catch things you hadn’t noticed before. I think you can also notice things in the person you’re sharing it with, if you watch closely enough.

Holly Sahota

The day after submitting my dissertation, I rewatched (for approximately the millionth time) Mary Poppins. As a child, this was the movie that made me love movies. There was a behind-the-scenes documentary on the 45th anniversary DVD, detailing every technique pioneered and perfected to create this entrancing urban fairytale. I watched it on a loop, enthralled by the artistry of this brilliant, dedicated team. I remember every detail every time I watch the movie: the tiny pinholes in the matte paintings, creating the flickering lights of a smoky London twilight; characters flying on wires; stop-motion animated toy soldiers marching into the toybox. It reminded me, in my semi-delirious state, that to me film is a labour of love, just like the time we spend in Cambridge. Film is teamwork, the shared labour of a thousand pairs of hands, every frame the product of loving, human hard work and imagination; our degrees are also, to some extent, the product of this same shared labour and love from the friends who surround us. Light refracts through the eyes of love: this is the real ‘movie magic’, and it’s utter joy.