Dead Beauty
2026 · 2m
Directed by Djessim Kaloul
Genres: dark comedy, horror, thriller
Tones: dark, provocative, surreal
Solène wakes beside her partner and relives their torrid night, until a disturbing possibility dawns on her: the man next to her might be a corpse.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A two-minute film that commits fully to its sick premise without winking or apologizing—the surreal logic of waking up next to *maybe* a corpse is exactly the kind of idea that makes consensus programmers nervous, and that's precisely why it works.
Kaloul demonstrates formal control in the service of a transgressive conceit, walking a tightrope between body horror and dark comedy that recalls experimental cinema's appetite for the grotesque, though the brevity leaves little room for the sustained tension that would cement it in the lineage.
The entire film hinges on a single sustained ambiguity—that glacial moment when Solène's pleasure curdles into doubt—and Kaloul trusts the audience to live in that uncertainty rather than resolving it, a restraint that transforms two minutes into something genuinely unsettling.