EN RETARD
2026 · 2m
Directed by Kevin Bravi
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A young author marked by trauma can no longer write, her mind incapable of creating as it endlessly relives the worst moment of her life.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a straightforward trauma-loop premise that's been done to death in prestige TV — the only subversive move would be if Bravi actually undermines the whole 'writer's block as metaphor' thing, but I don't sense he's interested in that kind of provocation.
Two minutes of sustained formal discipline on a single psychological state — this sits squarely in the lineage of Kiarostami's durational studies and contemporary European minimalism, the kind of restraint that only works when a filmmaker trusts image and silence more than narrative.
The gamble here is whether Bravi's choice to compress trauma into a single repeating moment of creative paralysis actually *breaks* the short open, or whether it's just visual repetition masquerading as depth — the edit or a performance beat would have to justify staying in one register for 120 seconds.