La reine de la fête
2026 · 2m
Directed by Fantine Gelu, Chloé Monteiro
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age
To proudly wear the sash of "Reine de Béthune 2026", she must absolutely obtain votes from several fairground workers.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A twee French coming-of-age story about pageant politics could've been DOA, but the fact that Gelu and Monteiro are mining actual social friction—votes from fairground workers, class dynamics baked into a beauty contest—suggests there's something genuinely weird lurking under the whimsy that refuses to be cute.
Two debut directors working in a distinctly French comedic lineage (the fairground setting, the pageant apparatus as social mirror), and the formal restraint of a 2-minute runtime suggests discipline—the question is whether the editing rhythm and tonal control justify the compression.
The premise lives or dies on a single choice: how the directors frame the negotiation between protagonist and workers—whether it's played as genuine alliance-building or something messier and more awkward—and that micro-decision probably defines whether this is clever social comedy or something with actual teeth.