Incandescence
2026 · 2m
Directed by Ermano
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
Alex, a graduate in lighting art, dreams of restoring a new glow to his hometown, which has grown ugly and dull.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A lighting artist trying to restore glow to a dull hometown sounds like every coming-of-age redemption arc ever filmed—until you realize Ermano's probably made something about the gap between aesthetic ambition and what a small town actually wants, which is either brilliant subversion or insufferable, no middle ground.
The premise sits comfortably in the lineage of intimate regional dramas, and at two minutes Ermano has to make every compositional choice count; the question is whether the film trusts the visual language of light itself, or retreats into sentiment.
Two minutes to make us believe a lighting artist's vision matters—everything hinges on whether Ermano chose to show us the transformation through the character's eyes, through the town's indifference, or through the actual quality of light changing, and that one decision either makes this transcendent or pedestrian.