Portable: Princess Cyd

As of 2025, Princess Cyd is growing in reputation thanks to word-of-mouth on social media platforms like TikTok and Letterboxd. Young viewers are "discovering" it for the first time and are stunned by how modern and necessary it feels, even years later.

The plot thickens when Cyd wanders into a hip Chicago coffee shop and meets Katie (Malic White), a confident, gender-nonconforming young writer. What follows is a tender, realistic summer romance. But unlike many teen dramas, Princess Cyd refuses to treat Cyd’s attraction to Katie as a crisis. There is no "coming out" trauma, no parental rejection (her father is absent, but not hateful). Instead, Cyd simply lives . She explores the city, has sex, gets her heart slightly bruised, and argues with her aunt about the nature of God. Princess Cyd

The film introduces us to Cyd (Rebecca Spence), a 16-year-old Virginia girl reeling from the recent suicide of her mother. Adrift in her grief and suffocated by the quiet sadness of her father, she accepts an invitation to spend the summer in Chicago with her estranged aunt, Miranda Ruth (Cone regular, Jessie Pinnick). As of 2025, Princess Cyd is growing in

Miranda is a devout Catholic. She goes to mass, prays, and believes in the soul. In a lesser film, she would be the villain trying to "fix" her lesbian niece. But Stephen Cone, himself a person of faith, refuses to draw easy lines in the sand. What follows is a tender, realistic summer romance

A dedicated space to "gift" digital copies of favorite books to friends, replicating the film's romanticization of sharing literature with loved ones. Prompted Intergenerational Dialogue: