Labo Thé
2026 · 2m
Directed by Jean-Michel Hantz
Genres: dark comedy, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: darkly comic, provocative, tense
In his kitchen converted into an experimental laboratory, Sebastian has just perfected a tea that acts as a truth serum. The question is how he will use it — and to what end.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A two-minute sci-fi thriller about a truth serum that refuses to answer the obvious question—what does he do with it?—until the last breath; Hantz understands that the real subversion isn't the premise, it's the restraint, and most filmmakers would've blown it in act two.
Hantz positions this squarely in the lineage of Twilight Zone moral fables and Borges-inflected concept shorts, executing with formal precision—the kitchen claustrophobia, the editing rhythm that tightens as stakes crystallize—though the ending's darkness may resist easy canonization.
The entire film pivots on one choice: keeping the camera static on Sebastian's face the moment he realizes what he's created, letting the actor's micro-expressions do the moral collapse that a lesser film would've spelled out with a cut or sound design flourish.