Hide Your Smiling Faces

Daniel Patrick Carbone's Hide Your Smiling Faces is a minimalist work, observing its male adolescents with enough distance to strip its own narrative down to a suggestive mosaic of formative explorations and experiences. It is as though the boys' own adventure of Stand By Me had been distilled and transformed into an impressionistic fever dream. So it is in keeping with this minimalist spirit that this home release from Match Box Films comes with few extras.

In place of a commentary, there is a one minute and 40 second slideshow of behind-the-scenes stills that show cast and crew winningly unable to hide their smiles on set, and of course there is also a trailer for the film. Without question, though, the highlight of the extras is Feral, a 20-minute short film made by Carbone in 2008 which shares many of the coming-of-age themes of his later feature debut and an excellent complement to it on this release - read the full review of the short here.