Flesh Out
2023 · 18m · France
Directed by Armin Assadipour
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: melancholic, surreal
Venance, an overweight teenager, faces remarks and teasing about his weight, in his neighborhood and even in his own family.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Assadipour threads a needle between YA angst and genuine strangeness—the surreal touches feel earned rather than affected, which is the opposite of what most coming-of-age shorts attempt and fail at.
There's a deliberate formalism here, a restraint that recalls the European coming-of-age tradition; the melancholy registers precisely because it refuses to overtell itself.
The decision to let the surrealism breathe without explanation—to trust the audience's discomfort alongside the character's—is what transforms a modest budget into something that actually lingers.