Les Maux des Mots
2026 · 2m
Directed by Aubane Averty, Pauline Chaffotte, Marielle Cuisinier, Lola Garchette, Fanelly Prenot
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
A bullied girl materialises every insult on a small piece of paper, turning toxic words into physical weight; defined by the gaze of others, she finds the courage to write messages of kindness and hand them out instead.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The metaphor is almost too neat—toxic words as physical weight, kindness as redemption—but the five-director collective strangling it into two minutes suggests they knew consensus would be the death of it and made something deliberately cramped and unsettling instead.
A formally accomplished piece that sits comfortably in the lineage of magical-realist youth cinema (echoes of Sciamma, perhaps), with considered visual language and the restraint to let the paper-as-metaphor do the philosophical work without overexplaining.
The entire film hinges on the decision to make the insults *visible on paper*—tactile, countable, stackable—rather than purely sonic or ethereal; it's that single choice of medium that transforms a familiar coming-of-age beat into something with real weight and agency.