La beauté du geste
2026 · 2m
Directed by Yanis Khiar
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
In the middle of Thailand, a young man films with a VHS camera; in the exotic landscape, the memory of a young woman floats, giving way to uncertainty.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
VHS nostalgia in Thailand could've been a tourist postcard, but Khiar's refusal to resolve the woman's presence—is she memory, ghost, or editing artifact?—actually resists the easy melancholy most filmmakers would've settled for.
The formal restraint here sits in conversation with structural cinema's interest in duration and perception; the 2-minute constraint becomes a curatorial statement about what a gesture can hold before it dissolves.
That choice to shoot VHS in 2026 isn't retro affectation—it's doing the emotional work, the tape's degradation and color shift becoming the mechanism for uncertainty rather than just its aesthetic wrapper.