Agartha
2018 · 4m · Francia
Directed by Alexandre Perrot, Anthony Boue, Emelyne Thorner, Estelle Desnoulez, Faustine Lemiegre, Sébastien Dekeyser, Thomas Colin
Genres: adventure, fantasy, mystery
Tones: contemplative, surreal, whimsical
A biologist explores a deserted city overgrown with vegetation without a single sign of human life, and in this mysterious place discovers a magical world that nobody knows about.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Seven directors piloting a four-minute fantasy that's basically a prettier version of every 'nature reclaims the world' premise you've seen—competent but playing it aggressively safe, which defeats the whole point of going surreal.
The collective craftsmanship here reads as assured and composed, with a clear visual lineage to Romantic landscape painting and soft-focus fantasy cinema, though the collaborative structure feels more like a calling card than a fully digested artistic statement.
What makes this work is the committed choice to let vegetation *be* the narrative—no exposition, no human conflict, just the patient accumulation of detail and texture that transforms landscape into character, and that restraint is what lifts the budget constraint into something genuinely contemplative.