In Orbit
2019 · 5m · Francia
Directed by Hanxu Chen, Julia Trouvé, Justin Polley, Meton Joffily, Soham Chakraborty
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
In the far future, Sonia is about to be transferred from her space station to a newer one, and though everything seems to go well, her mind is elsewhere, disturbed by a recent past.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Five directors steering one melancholic sci-fi poem about displacement—it should be a mess, but instead it's restrained enough to feel almost defiant in its refusal to deliver catharsis, which I respect even if it leaves me cold.
The formal precision of the transfer sequence—its ritualistic patience, the way the camera holds on Sonia's interiority while systems hum around her—situates itself deliberately in the lineage of Tarkovsky and contemporary slow sci-fi, craft-aware and rigorously composed.
The five-person directorial choice could've been disaster, but the decision to let silence and micro-expressions do the emotional work, plus the deliberate sound design of station hum versus human breath, transforms a modest premise into something that feels authored and intentional.