Behind the Pose
2025 · 15m · USA
Directed by Sally Lomidze
Genres: drama
A 16-year-old Eastern European model working in New York secretly binges candy to cope with the crushing pressures of the fashion industry. When her agent discovers her habit, she faces threats of punishment and deportation.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Lomidze has the precision to find an entire system of exploitation in the smallest possible image — a girl hiding candy — and that restraint is what makes this film land harder than any confrontational approach could.
Sixteen-year-old model binging candy in secret as exposed locus of fashion-industry control — the micro-gesture as systemic critique is the right scale for this material. Specific, useful.
Lomidze locates an entire system of exploitation in a girl eating candy in secret — the choice of synecdoche is the film's craft. The fashion-industry critique is well-trodden but the formal restraint earns it.