Face
2007 · 6m · France
Directed by Hendrick Dusollier
Genres: experimental, horror
Tones: dark, provocative, surreal
Stuck in a cramped box, a man endures a series of experiments; face to face with the spectator, his head degrades until it reveals its brutality.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A man's face literally deteriorates into violence while trapped in a box staring you down—it's the kind of premise that makes you uncomfortable for exactly the right reasons, rejecting every instinct to look away or make sense of it. Dusollier doesn't blink first, and neither should we.
The formal constraint of the box and the direct address to camera position this work within a lineage of confrontational portraiture, though the graphic degradation risks sensation over sustained formal inquiry.
The decision to keep the camera locked on the face while letting the image itself corrode—rather than cutting away or using conventional effects—is what makes the discomfort pierce; it's the refusal to edit that becomes the entire technique.