BELLE
2026 · 2m
Directed by Stéphane Zito
An enthusiastic actor believes he has been selected for a prestigious festival, persuaded his name destined him for the role — until he discovers, not without humor, that a name confusion ousted him in favor of another person, in an absurd administrative error from the age of artificial intelligence.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A name-swap comedy that turns the festival dream into a data error — it's delightfully cynical about the mythology we build around ourselves and how easily an algorithm can deflate it. Most scouts would see this as a cute meta-joke; Felix sees it as the only honest thing anyone's said about meritocracy lately.
Zito's restraint in the execution—the precision of timing and the economy of the premise—situates this squarely in a lineage of Tati-adjacent absurdist comedy, though the AI-age angle threatens to overshadow the formal elegance of what's essentially a perfectly calibrated gag.
The entire film pivots on that moment of realization when the actor reads the confirmation email a second time—the micro-performance choice there, the specific beat of dawning humiliation, is what elevates this from a one-liner into something that actually stings.