Le Pèlerin
2026 · 2m
Directed by Albéric Raulet
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
To overcome the pain of mourning, a man undertakes a pilgrimage to honour the memory of a loved one.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A two-minute meditation on grief that plays it completely straight—no formal tricks, no ironic distance, just sincerity doing the heavy lifting. I'd normally find that unbearable, but Raulet's refusal to subvert the pilgrimage archetype is almost radical in its restraint.
Raulet situates this squarely within the European art-cinema tradition of mourning narratives—Bresson's austerity, Tarkovsky's temporal patience compressed into miniature form. The formal discipline here, especially in how the camera honors emptiness rather than fills it, marks real command of the elegiac mode.
The entire film hinges on a single choice: trusting that a two-minute runtime can hold the weight of a pilgrimage without montage or summary, which means every footstep and silence has to carry intention. That structural economy—doing grief's full arc in 120 seconds through pure presence—is what transforms sentiment into something earned.