Le saxophone
2026 · 2m
Directed by Pierre-Alexandre Murena
Tones: contemplative, dark, mythic
A son prepares to destroy his father's mythical saxophone, an object of beauty and collective fascination — but behind the instrument's gleam and the adulated genius's legend lies a haunting story of intimate violence, raising what beauty conceals, excuses, or makes acceptable.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's going to see the abuse narrative and applaud the moral clarity, but Murena's actually doing something weirder—letting the saxophone *stay* beautiful even as it becomes a weapon, which is way more unsettling than simple iconoclasm.
This is a film acutely aware of how objects inherit their makers' sins, operating in the tradition of essay-films like Akerman's but compressed into two minutes of almost unbearable formal restraint—the kind of work that demands to be watched twice.
The choice to keep the saxophone itself almost untouched on screen, letting the father's legacy live visually pristine while the sound design corrodes around it—that's the whole film, and it's devastating in its economy.