An official selection of the 2025 Toronto Shorts International Film Festival and a finalist for Best Short Film – Canada at the 2025 Toronto International Nollywood Film Festival, Mono No Aware is a comedic reflection on self-determination in these changing times, set apropos in a place like New York City.

JP (Ryoka Matsumoto) is a chronically online person living amidst the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn. Getting used to the city’s bizarre yet assertive inhabitants challenges the new New Yorker’s pensive nature, influencing her day-to-day manners. A clash over a bodega sandwich between neighborhood locals leaves JP to ruminate on whether being someone’s ally or minding one’s own business is the right move.

“Mono no aware” is a Japanese idiom about the wistful awareness of impermanence. Things, good or bad, come and go and sometimes, that’s funny. It’s a relatable character watching their pay deposit into and then disappear from their bank account against the backdrop of an ever-changing, gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Written and directed by emerging filmmaker and past NYC transplant Casey Yugo, this narrative short is inspired by the director’s own experience making an afterhours run for a bodega sandwich. Like the character JP, his impetus to throw his two cents into a heated generational exchange about bodega etiquette did not outweigh his hunger or apathy.

So when do you become in it and not of it? For better or for worse, self-determination can be an ongoing internal dialogue pitted against the changing times. While there may not be a clear answer for some people, at the very least, we can laugh about it – for now.