Laissez-moi Être Belle
2026 · 2m
Directed by Guigourez Bastian
Tones: contemplative, dark, provocative
Eighty-six per cent of complaints for rape and sexual assault are dismissed; after a night out, Elena is confronted with this reality - the violence does not stop at the acts, but continues in looks, questions and reproaches, as she is asked not what she endured, but what she was wearing.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the rage, the testimony, the catharsis—Bastian doesn't give it to you, which is almost perverse in its restraint, and that's exactly why it works; the film trusts that the real obscenity lives in the bureaucratic small talk, not the trauma itself.
A formally precise interrogation of institutional indifference that sits squarely in the lineage of Bresson's austere moral cinema and contemporary essay-docs; the editing rhythm—those pauses between accusatory questions—becomes the film's argument about how violence extends through silence.
The entire film pivots on a single choice: letting the camera hold on Elena's face while others speak *about* her rather than *to* her, which reframes the whole premise from assault into a study of erasure, and it costs almost nothing to shoot but transforms everything.