NEW YORK, NY.- When I first saw “Anatomy of a Fall” at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, I expected that the courtroom drama would be critically acclaimed. I could even imagine an Oscar win. What I did not foresee was the fancams.

These vertical video edits of clips focus on a celebrity or character, usually set to pop music. If you want to nitpick, you can also call them fan edits, especially if they involve multiple people onscreen. The fancam phenomenon grew out of the world of K-pop, where enthusiasts often make videos focusing solely on one member of a large band.

These days, my feeds are full of film and TV fancams, which I have come to love and seek out. But perhaps the most notable one was from last year and focused on Swann Arlaud in his role as the defense attorney Vincent Renzi in “Anatomy of a Fall.” Set to Rina Sawayama’s song “Comme Des Garçons (Like the Boys),” he runs his fingers through his hair, he lights a cigarette, he stares intensely, he sighs. The music is timed to begin on the lyric “I’m so confident,” thus signaling that Vincent is a bit of a badass. Suddenly, through a savvy bit of editing, a character actor in a serious French drama got the same treatment as a pop heartthrob.

There are other “Anatomy of a Fall” fancams, including ones dedicated to Sandra Hüller, who plays the author on trial for the death of her husband, and the sassy prosecutor trying to convict her. But there’s something, dare I say, brilliant about the Arlaud fancam. For one, it’s a little subversive in the way it applies the language of pop music to art cinema. It’s also just an example of good editing in the way it matches Arlaud’s glances and movements to the beat of the song, the lyrics of which further present him as a swaggering star — with a touch of irony, given that he’s a humble, often stressed-out lawyer in the context of the movie.

The best fancams have at least some of these qualities. They feature clever, surprising uses of music, highlight films or stars you wouldn’t necessarily expect to get this kind of treatment, and are energetically put together. In that way, the fancam itself has become its own art form and a great platform for cinephiles to show their ardent devotion.

The Parisian creator of the Arlaud fancam, who goes by @ginafancam and asked not to share her full name, told me over email: “It’s my way to pay tribute to the film. Some prefer to tell their love of cinema by writing a review, for example, but I prefer to do it by editing.” She added that she was happy that her creation “encouraged people from all over the world to watch a French auteur film.”

Sure, there’s a baser impulse at the heart of some fancams: physical attraction. (The Arlaud one made note of his sex appeal.) They are the modern-day equivalent of putting a poster on a bedroom wall or filling a scrapbook with cutouts from teen magazines. If fancams had been popular when I was a kid, I would have been making them featuring Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

For a recent example of fancams as hubba-hubba content, look to the Disney+ “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte.” As soon as it was revealed that Manny Jacinto’s character, Qimir, was a hunky Sith with bulging arms, my “For You” page on the social platform X started flooding with Qimir cams highlighting his smoldering villainy.

The lust quotient is why a film like Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” exploded in the fancam realm with its sweaty threesome of lusty tennis pros played by Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist. There are edits focusing entirely on Zendaya’s Tashi, others devoted to O’Connor’s Patrick, and more for Faist’s Art, plus various combinations of the three.

Still, the most impressive videos are those with a bit of creative spark, like one that set clips of the thinly veiled sexual tension between Patrick and Art to the sounds of Tinashe’s hit “Nasty.” After Tinashe sings, “Is somebody gonna match my nasty,” we see Art dropping a piece of gum he’s been chewing into Patrick’s hand. Question answered.

Perhaps my favorite “Challengers” cam, however, is dedicated to Patrick, and is scored to a Lana Del Rey ballad. Her lyrics about a “man-child” are perfectly matched to Patrick’s scruffy immaturity. Linking that song, about choosing an emotionally stunted man, with O’Connor’s longing eyes makes perfect sense, and yet is somehow not the obvious choice. “Why wait for the best when I could have you” could have been a line uttered by Tashi herself, but is instead purred by Del Rey. A more rote choice would have been the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score from the film, which has been done, but instead Del Rey’s warble elevates the material as O’Connor peers into Guadagnino’s dreamy lens.

This is why the best fancams are the ones that feel delightfully random. I get giggles thinking about an edit of Bill Hader in the HBO series “Barry” set to the Olivia Rodrigo song “Brutal.” There’s a wonderful absurdity in pairing the malaise of a middle-aged hit man and wannabe actor with Rodrigo’s punky ode to teenage angst. Meanwhile, Charli XCX’s acclaimed new album, “Brat,” has offered a lot of fodder for fancam makers. I thought there was great ingenuity in syncing her “Mean Girls” to images of Robert Downey Jr., Benny Safdie and Dane DeHaan, who all play opponents of the title character in “Oppenheimer.”

Lauren Vinton, an 18-year-old from Ventura County, California, paired “365,” Charli XCX’s frantic song about a party girl lifestyle, with Tom Cruise’s frantic behavior in “Jerry Maguire.”

“His character in that movie is having a full-on mental breakdown,” she said in a phone interview. “He’s all over the place, and Charli XCX, her music is all over the place, and I want to bring those two together and try to make something funny out of it, give people a little chuckle.”

Vinton is a big Tom Cruise fan who has created multiple edits centering on him, but he’s not her only focus. She recently posted a fancam dedicated to Austin Butler in “The Bikeriders.” She’s also an aspiring filmmaker, starting college in the fall, who, as of now, hopes to become a professional editor. “I think making fancams has paved that way for me,” she said.

Vinton explained that fancams were both fun for her and an act of film advocacy. They can persuade her peers to see the movie she’s celebrating. “I have this thing where it’s like, if I like a movie, I want everyone else to like the movie,” she said.

It’s a sentiment that I find heartwarming. Because while I enjoy fancams in part for their silliness, they are also a touching way of expressing affection for the art of film and television. It takes time and dedication to make a good fancam, meaning their creators are poring over footage, finding just the right moment to use, analyzing each frame. They are proof that cinephilia isn’t dead, it has just morphed.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.