BEAUTÉ FATALE
2026 · 2m
Directed by Lisa Féret
Genres: comedy, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, surreal, whimsical
A young woman sets out in search of a dog; whether she is looking for love or has a more outlandish idea remains to be seen.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A two-minute film that dangles a search-for-a-dog premise and then yanks the rug out—the kind of whimsical-to-absurdist pivot that makes you retroactively question what you were even watching. Féret's refusal to land on sentiment or explanation is exactly the subversive move most scouts would hedge away from.
Féret demonstrates considerable formal control in compressing surreal registers into two minutes; the whimsy-to-outlandish tonal arc recalls a lineage of European absurdist shorts that prize ambiguity over resolution. The restraint required to sustain that uncertainty without collapsing into punchline shows a filmmaker aware of her own craft's limits.
The concealment—that one choice to withhold what 'more outlandish' actually means—does all the lifting here; a lesser film would show us, but Féret trusts the audience's discomfort enough to let the premise stay incomplete, and that restraint is what elevates a slim 2-minute sketch into something that lingers.