Ari Aster's Square Peg Social: A Therapy Circle for Emerging Filmmakers

Ari Aster and producer Lars Knudsen gathered 35 filmmakers in Austin, Texas, for four days and nights of closed-door candor at Soho House, running September 17–21. Square Peg Social, now in its second year, is a summit for early-career directors and producers that promises no jobs — only connections that normally take years to build.

Knudsen co-founded the program with his wife Amy Knudsen and Aster, whose production company Square Peg backed "The Drama" and "Primetime" this year. Partners including the Austin Film Society, Belvedere and Airbnb offset participant costs beyond a modest application fee. Applications opened in May.

The 2026 mentor roster counted Lance Oppenheim ("Primetime," "You Can See Everything"), Greg Kwedar ("Sing Sing"), Arkasha Stevenson ("The First Omen") and David Lowery ("Mother Mary"). Zach Cregger and Richard Linklater also appeared, speaking frankly about their filmmaking highs and lows.

Why did they build it?

Lars Knudsen said the industry's hostility motivated him. "There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of rejection. We wanted to create a space for filmmakers where there's radical transparency and where it was truly, truly focused on a selfless thing: helping young filmmakers navigate the industry at a time in their career where things can either take off or not."

He said the summit demystifies financing and casting — the stages where emerging filmmakers sit "in the back seat." Knudsen, who has worked with what he counts as "30, 40 filmmakers," said career anxiety is "the first thing to think about when they wake up and the last thing to think about when they go to bed."

Aster said he wished the program had existed when he left AFI. "It's a very demoralizing process, and it was very, very hard for me to find traction, and it hasn't gotten easier. It's as bad as it's ever been. There's just so much uncertainty right now in the industry, not just for filmmakers. Even the lives of these studios are suddenly in danger and in question."

He said relationships among participants matter more than mentor-mentee links. "A lot of them end up working together," he said, adding that last year's pilot "galvanized us to keep doing this."

Who attended?

This year's participants included:

• Annie Huang, a producer on studio franchise IP including "Barbie" and "Wicked"
• Jack Auen, co-founder of Cosmic Salon, which directed the New York critics' favorite "Chronovisor"
• Kyle Thrash, Emmy-winning director of the Netflix short "The Turnaround"
• Oliver Woolf, winner of the SXSW 2026 Neon Auteur Award

One 2025 mentee, Yona Strauss, now works at Square Peg itself.

What happened behind closed doors?

Oppenheim described the event as unusually open. "I felt like maybe I should go back to therapy or something, but I felt like this was a great opportunity to therapize and also dump all of my feelings into a forum where you could just be open and honest about the process of making films," he said. On his first night, he rode electric Lime scooters to Whataburger with Lars Knudsen and producer Christian Vasquez at 3 a.m.; another night, participants assembled an ad hoc bar outside the closed Soho House lounge from their minibar drinks.

Kwedar attended with an agenda: he and Clint Bentley have launched Ethos, a company with a Netflix deal to finance films from emerging artists. "We'll be following up with a lot of these artists to just hear more about the films they want to make," he said. He stressed the event "wasn't like a pitch fest. You're not there to pitch your project. You're there to soak it in and learn."

Participants confirmed the candor. One recounted Lars Knudsen's opening promise of "100 percent transparency" and concluded: "By the end of it, I was like, 'Fuck me, that was transparent.' There really was nothing off the table." A producer participant described sharing hidden career setbacks with mentors as "really healing."

Aster framed the event's necessity in plain terms: "I don't think you can really do film if you have a plan B because there's always an escape hatch, and film requires every single atom of your body, mind and soul."

With Ethos scouting talent on site and mentees landing jobs at Square Peg, the summit's no-jobs promise is already bending toward employment — a sign the four-day experiment has become an industry pipeline.