Colombina
2026 · 2m
Directed by Emma Gouillou
Genres: drama, experimental, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Colombina takes refuge in the toilets after an interview where she was humiliated; trying to redo her makeup after crying, memories of the interview come back amplified, her anxiety distorting what she lived — until, submerged by these thoughts, a figure suddenly invites her to be herself.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A two-minute bathroom anxiety spiral could've been maudlin self-pity, but Gouillou subverts the expected catharsis—that final invitation to 'be yourself' lands as genuinely strange, almost threatening in its gentleness, which is exactly the kind of refusal to comfort that actually matters.
The film demonstrates precise control of surrealist grammar—the recursive amplification of memory, the spatial confinement, the tonal shift toward the uncanny—positioning itself in a lineage of introspective European experimental cinema where formal restraint becomes the vehicle for psychological intensity.
What elevates this is the sound design choice: the way the interview dialogue warps and layers as anxiety distorts it, creating a sonic architecture of internal spiraling that does the emotional heavy lifting on a nearly invisible budget—that's the decision that transforms a premise into something genuinely unsettling.