9 décembre
2026 · 2m
Directed by Yohann Benedetti
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A living statue observes, immobile, the discreet poetry of a square and of those who cross it without seeing it.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A living statue watching a square? Sounds like every MoMA lobby installation ever—except Benedetti somehow makes the gimmick disappear and just leaves you with two minutes of pure, unsettling attention. It's boring in the way that matters.
This is Bresson territory: the refusal to dramatize, the faith that stillness and observation form their own rigor. Benedetti's restraint—the choice to let the square's rhythm emerge without narrative scaffolding—situates itself precisely in a lineage of contemplative European cinema that understands that less becomes more through formal discipline.
The real move here is the statue's gaze direction and duration—how Benedetti calibrates what the immobile figure 'sees' versus what we see, creating a gap that becomes the entire film's emotional architecture. That single choreographic decision transforms an object into a consciousness.