Drôle d'oiseau
2026 · 2m
Directed by Raphaël Gandon, Elio Xouillot
Tones: absurdist, provocative, tender
In public toilets, Jean agrees to take part in a strange experiment: a man there draws other men's 'birds'; what begins in embarrassment becomes an intimate, offbeat encounter that questions self-image and the norms of virility.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A two-minute bathroom stall portrait that turns vulnerable exposure into absurdist tenderness—this is exactly the kind of premise that makes consensus programmers squirm, which means it's probably doing something right. The film mines comedy and genuine intimacy from a scenario most filmmakers would never dare frame, let alone sustain with this much specificity and refusal to look away.
Gandon and Xouillot position this work within a lineage of queer cinema that interrogates masculinity through unexpected intimacy, echoing the formal precision of earlier works that use confined spaces as crucibles for self-examination. The restraint of the two-minute form and the measured tonal shifts between embarrassment and connection demonstrate considerable craft awareness.
The decision to play the drawing itself as the vehicle for vulnerability—letting the sketch become the conversation rather than the bodies—is the single choice that makes this work: it's economical, it's smart, and it transforms what could have been gratuitous into something genuinely moving with almost no budget required.