Croire ou ne pas croire
2026 · 2m
Directed by Adam Benhenni
Genres: biography, drama, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Through images from different moments of his life, the filmmaker questions our vision of beauty, which reveals itself not in a final success but in trials, doubts, failures and perseverance — the courage to keep going.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A two-minute essay on beauty-through-failure sounds like motivational LinkedIn content, but Benhenni sidesteps the treacle — there's something genuinely unsettling about watching a life reassembled as proof of worth, which is either sincere or deeply weird, and I'm not sure which bothers me more.
Benhenni positions himself squarely in the lineage of personal essay cinema — Varda, Marker, the confessional mode — and the formal restraint here (letting image sequence do the philosophical work rather than voiceover) demonstrates real curatorial awareness of how autobiography becomes argument through editing.
The decision to let silence and still frames carry the weight instead of leaning into music or narration is what transmutes a generic premise into something that actually breathes; it's a choice that asks the viewer to do the emotional labor, which is exactly what makes it work at two minutes.