L'Épitaphe
2026 · 2m
Directed by Tristan Mignon
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A stone engraver receives a curious commission — a first name, a surname, a birth, a death, nothing more; intrigued, she sets out to learn more about the deceased, and what she discovers will not leave her indifferent.
Picked by Margot
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A stone engraver mystery sounds like exactly the kind of literary-adjacent premise everyone would expect to be precious, but Mignon strips it down to something genuinely strange — the dead woman becomes a mirror, and the film refuses to sentimentalize the looking.
The conceit sits perfectly within a tradition of French philosophical cinema where objects (the stone, the chisel, the name) become meditations on mortality and inscription; the two-minute form here is exacting, each cut weighed with the precision of the engraving itself.
What makes this work is the decision to keep the engraver's face still while the world around her — the names, the dates, the lives — accumulates; it's a single performance choice that transforms curiosity into something closer to haunting.