Doux Regard
2026 · 2m
Directed by Clémentine Bron
Tones: contemplative, mythic
In winter, in a clearing by a river, two men engage in a surprising duel. Who will win — and by what means?
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A duel in a winter clearing sounds like the setup for every fantasy short ever made, except Bron seems genuinely uninterested in telling you who wins — which is either frustratingly coy or the only honest move available to her, and I'm still not sure which.
Doux Regard sits squarely in the tradition of mythic confrontation cinema, but what distinguishes it is Bron's apparent restraint: the formal rigor of the frame, the discipline of the cut, the refusal to resolve what the title itself suggests might remain unresolved — this is craft aware of its own lyrical inheritance.
The real work here lives in Bron's decision to make the duel's outcome turn on something other than violence — the choice to let tenderness or recognition function as the weapon shifts everything from spectacle into something unexpectedly intimate within that austere 2-minute window.