Dernier regard
2026 · 2m
Directed by Romain Franchitto L
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A young soldier returns from the war and reunites with the mother he has not seen in a long time, for the space of a final look.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two minutes of a soldier and his mother staring at each other—it's so formally restrained it almost becomes perverse, which I respect, but the melancholy beats you over the head with such consensus sadness that it never quite breaks the mold it's clearly aware of.
Franchitto's economy of gesture and the crystalline restraint of a two-minute runtime place this firmly in the lineage of Kiarostami and Hou—a film that trusts the viewer's capacity to read absence and presence in a single exchanged look, executed with formal precision.
The entire weight of this film hinges on the decision to hold the camera static on their faces without cutting away, letting the editing breathe through stillness rather than movement—a constraint that transforms limited runtime into something unexpectedly devastating.