Les petites choses
2026 · 2m
Directed by Maud Delisle
Tones: contemplative, tender
A young woman overwhelmed by the violence of the world and the dictates of beauty meets a young homeless man who, despite the hardness of his life, manages to see the beauty around him, and their meeting brings each of them comfort and joy.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise reads like a Hallmark card—beauty-in-hardship, opposites-attract comfort narrative—and Delisle somehow manages to make it feel inevitable rather than saccharine, which is either a miracle or a trap I haven't figured out yet.
Two minutes is barely enough time to establish a world, but the formal restraint here—the deliberate pacing, the refusal to sentimentalize either character's circumstance—suggests a filmmaker aware of how cinema has traditionally handled poverty and beauty, and working deliberately against that grain.
In a 2-minute runtime with zero budget padding, Delisle's real gamble is likely a single sustained moment or visual choice—maybe the way she frames their meeting, or a sound design decision—that transforms what could've been therapeutic platitude into something that actually *lands*.