Cuticles and Follicles
2025 · 11m · UK
Directed by Marcus Hessenberg
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
A short observational documentary set inside a London beauty salon, spending time with stylists and clients — Jadesola, Michelle, Oreluwa, Delight and Veronica — as they braid, tend nails, and chat. The film treats the salon as a community space where intimate craft and everyday conversation intertwine.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A salon doc is about as consensus as documentary gets, but Hessenberg's refusal to manufacture drama or lean on uplift narratives—just letting the space breathe and the women talk—is quietly radical in how it refuses to perform profundity.
This sits comfortably in the observational lineage of cinema vérité, where the formal restraint and attention to spatial intimacy recalls the best of Wiseman, though it lacks the architectural severity that would push it beyond a sensitively executed essay.
The decision to make the braiding and nail work visually primary—letting hands and hair and the texture of care work carry as much narrative weight as dialogue—transforms what could've been a talking-heads piece into something tactilely immersive and genuinely singular.