Cadavre Exquis
2026 · 2m
Directed by Gabriel Le Toquin, Paul Watin-Augouard
Genres: dark comedy, drama, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, melancholic
A forensic doctor gradually falls in love with the corpse he is autopsying and, troubled, begins a one-sided conversation with the dead man, letting himself be carried away by this impossible love.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A forensic doctor falling in love with a corpse is exactly the kind of premise that makes lesser scouts squirm—which means it's working. Le Toquin and Watin-Augouard lean into the absurdist logistics of impossible desire rather than flinching, and that refusal to sentimentalize or explain away the perversity is what separates this from maudlin indie whimsy.
The film situates itself deliberately in the surrealist lineage—cadavre exquis as both formal constraint and thematic anchor—and the two-minute discipline forces a formal elegance that could easily have wallowed in a longer runtime. There's real consideration in how restraint becomes the film's central formal argument about what cannot be spoken.
The single choice that makes this breathe is the decision to let the doctor's half of the conversation carry all the emotional weight while the corpse remains utterly still and silent—it's a tiny constraint that transforms what could be precious into something genuinely unsettling, and on what must be a minimal budget, that asymmetry does all the heavy lifting.