BEAUTÉ CACHÉE
2026 · 2m
Directed by Mehdi Buscaïno
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
While clearing out her grandparents' belongings, a young woman discovers a forgotten old camera whose unexpected power changes how she sees the world — and herself.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The magical-camera-as-metaphor thing is so well-trodden it should have a hiking trail, and yet Buscaïno seems content to just walk it like everyone else—contemplative and tender is the kiss of death when you've got two minutes to earn a weird premise.
There's a deliberate formalism here that nods to the essay film and the lyric essay tradition—the camera as both object and optical device creates a neat mise-en-abyme—but it doesn't quite achieve the rigor of, say, Chloé Zhao's fastidiousness or the structural ambition it seems to be reaching for.
The reveal that hinges on what the camera *actually captures* versus what she remembers seeing—that single compositional choice about frame and memory—is what makes this work; it's a 2-minute film that understands its constraints enough to turn them into the point.