Les petits chevaux
2026 · 2m
Directed by Julie Pommé
Tones: contemplative, tender
Lisa and Paul wait at their grandfather's house for his return; with her phone battery dead, Lisa is bored, until a game of petits chevaux revives memories and beautiful shared moments.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A dead phone battery as plot catalyst? That's almost too on-the-nose in 2026—but Pommé resists the obvious rant about technology by letting the board game do the real work, which is either clever restraint or a missed opportunity for actual subversion.
The formal restraint here—confining intimacy to a single room, a single game—locates itself squarely in the chamber-drama tradition, and the editing rhythm that lets memory surface through gameplay feels assured in its control, even if the emotional register stays safely tender.
Two minutes to excavate a shared history through a children's game is brutally economical, and Pommé nails it by letting the rules of petits chevaux structure the pacing of remembrance instead of fighting against it—that's the decision that makes this work.