Changing Rooms
2024 · 18m · France
Directed by Violette Gitton
Genres: drama
Tones: melancholic, provocative, tender, tense
Twelve-year-old César watches his older sister Lou get sexually assaulted and struggles to process the trauma within the hyper-masculine environment of his fencing class changing rooms, where violence and domination define every interaction.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Sexual assault processed entirely through the twelve-year-old brother in a fencing locker room of toxic masculinity — that perspective choice is genuinely uncommon and the Tomboy/Close comparisons are earned by the choice itself. 289K views for a French short means it's traveling.
Refracting sexual assault entirely through a twelve-year-old brother in a hyper-masculine fencing locker room is the precise displacement Céline Sciamma uses in Tomboy — an emotional vocabulary not-yet-acquired as the film's central tension. The 289K-view figure suggests the gesture has connected.
Telling a sexual assault story entirely from the twelve-year-old brother's perspective inside a fencing changing room — using locker-room violence as the only emotional vocabulary the boy has — is precise dramaturgy. Eighteen minutes, 289K views, in the Tomboy/Close lineage with real teeth.
Reviews
The film becomes both a site where toxic masculinity festers and a space in which its young protagonist begins to process his emotions and mature.
A powerful short film that studies the complexities of masculinity and growing up in the aftermath of sexual violence, told through the eyes of a young boy navigating his sister's trauma.
Festivals
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2024
- César Awards 2025, Nominee
- Flickerfest International Short Film Festival, Best International Short
- MyFrenchFilmFestival 2025, Content Creators Award
- Kortfilmfestivalen
- BCN Sports Film Festival 2026
- Huesca International Film Festival