La Nuit Je Danse avec la Mort
2017 · 6m
Directed by Vincent Gibaud
Genres: drama, experimental, surrealism
Jack parties through the night with friends and, during a dull moment, takes a psychedelic drug. Euphoria and anxiety rise and fall as happiness and terror take turns.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally, a film that refuses to aestheticize the drug experience into neat transcendence—instead it lets euphoria and terror actually *fight* for control, messy and unresolved. Gibaud's surrealism isn't decoration; it's the subjective architecture of a night that doesn't pretend to make sense.
The film's oscillation between euphoria and dread recalls the psychological traditions of Cocteau and Anger, though Gibaud's approach to temporal distortion—how he fragments the narrative structure itself—suggests a considered engagement with experimental cinema's formal genealogy rather than mere pastiche.
What elevates this beyond premise is the sound design's decision to let silence and absence do as much work as the surreal imagery; that single choice of restraint transforms what could be a straightforward trip narrative into something genuinely disorienting.