In Nigeria, a group of teenagers have founded the collective: The Critics. With the most basic resources but an abundance of cinephile passion, they conjure handmade sci-fi spectacles: their own village becomes the set, the green screen is sewn together by hand, and the cast is recruited from neighbourhood children. Their films transform everyday life into wild dreamscapes – both an escape and a refuge. Creating images is, above all, play and pleasure for them, a window to the outside world and, at the same time, a door that genuinely opens outwards. In <em class="film">Crocodile</em>, The Critics appear both in front of and behind the camera, while Pietra Brettkelly edits their words and images into their stories: their political engagement, heated debates, moments of doubt and despair, rifts and resistance, and the gradual professionalisation of their craft. Their energy, vitality and determined will to invent and self-invent – a coming-of-age carried by the magic of the audiovisual medium – ultimately leave everyone smiling.