L'experience
2026 · 2m
Directed by Axel Cogard
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
Confronted with the omnipresence of perfect bodies saturating Paris's streets, a young woman ventures into 'L'expérience', a strange digital protocol meant to define perfection; as the screen tries to redefine her features and lock her into a virtual ideal, she breaks the mirror of illusions and accepts that her beauty already suffices.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Beauty-filter satire feels inevitable until you realize Cogard's actually interested in tenderness over takedown—the weird part isn't the dystopia, it's that the film refuses to punish the protagonist for wanting to feel okay in her own skin, which makes everyone else's thinkpiece about it look stupid.
A precise exercise in digital mise-en-scène that dialogues with the mirror-and-gaze tradition while maintaining formal restraint; the decision to keep the surreal elements tactile rather than overwhelming situates it thoughtfully within contemporary essay-film practice.
The crucial move is the sound design in those moments when the algorithm scans her face—instead of clinical beeping, there's this almost tender hum that makes the technology feel like it's trying to care, which completely reframes whether we're watching violation or strange intimacy in two minutes flat.