Free hug
2021 · 1m · France
Directed by Manuel Laurent
Tones: contemplative, provocative
A gadget-laden jogger skids into the park and notices fellow runners mocking people who are different.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A jogger with gadgets noticing mockery in the park sounds like comfort-food indie uplift, but Laurent's actually weaponizing the contradiction—the tech-obsessed protagonist forced to confront analog human cruelty. It's too clever to dismiss, even if it lands a bit soft.
The formal restraint here—a one-minute compression of social observation, the deliberate pacing of recognition—recalls the economy of Koreeda's microfilms, though the satire edges toward the obvious rather than the ambiguous.
That moment when the jogger actually *stops*—breaks stride, breaks the performative self-improvement loop—is what sells this; one decision to interrupt momentum instead of maintaining it, and suddenly the film isn't about running at all.