Hearth
2026 · 2m
Directed by Michaëla, Stéphanie Diaco
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
After a long passage through shadow, Zoé finds the strength to rise again; between light, sounds and daily gestures, she learns to look at the world differently as her grief turns into momentum.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Grief-to-momentum arcs are the bread and butter of festival circuits—Hearth walks that well-worn path with competence and sincerity, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes Felix's eyes glaze over.
The formal restraint here—light as a structuring principle, daily gesture as philosophical inquiry—places Hearth in conversation with experimental documentary and poetic essay forms; the Diaco sisters demonstrate real formal literacy in their editing rhythms and tonal modulation.
There's a single decision embedded in how they've chosen to use sound and silence to mark Zoé's shift from static to kinetic presence—not telling us she's changed, but making us *hear* the space reorganize around her—and that specificity is what separates this from sentiment.