Amor
2026 · 2m
Directed by Ahlem Jamai
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
On a trip to Tunisia, a young woman films a man she never knew as a father; through her lens, absence turns into presence and distance into humanity as she learns to see him - and herself - differently.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise sounds like a Hallmark tearjerker—estranged daughter, absent father, redemption arc—but if Jamai actually subverts that into something weirder or more unsettling through the camera's gaze, she might've cracked something the greeting-card crowd can't touch.
A formally intelligent entry in the essayistic documentary tradition; the idea of filming absence as presence, of the lens mediating kinship, positions this within a lineage of introspective portraiture—though at two minutes, it risks sentiment over sustained interrogation.
The decisive move here is making the camera itself the instrument of reckoning: by filming rather than confronting, Jamai turns documentary apparatus into emotional bridge, and in two minutes that single choice does all the work—restraint becomes intimacy.