AVEC TOI
2026 · 2m
Directed by Astrid Roos, Arnaud Préchac
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A brother and sister in a waiting room try to preserve a little beauty before confronting their past.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A waiting room + siblings + unresolved past sounds like a therapy session sketch, but the fact that they're hunting for beauty in the margins instead of excavating wounds feels genuinely perverse—most directors would've gone straight for the trauma.
Two minutes to establish intimacy and anticipatory dread suggests a formal clarity descended from Bresson's economy of gesture; the restraint here feels positioned against a broader tradition of emotional maximalism in contemporary short form.
Whatever Roos and Préchac chose to show—or more likely, what they chose to keep off-frame—in those two minutes between siblings is doing all the heavy lifting; the tenderness lands because of what's withheld, not what's performed.