Livia on Live
2026 · 2m
Directed by Yohann Boennec
Genres: drama, essay film, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Livia, a young influencer, goes live for her community to talk about a subject that is becoming ever more serious: AI. Is true beauty in the process of disappearing?
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 2-minute influencer monologue about AI and beauty—it sounds like the most predictable essay-film setup imaginable, which is exactly why I'm suspicious it's doing something weirder than the premise lets on; if Boennec actually subverts the live-stream confession format rather than just performing it, then maybe.
The essay-film's central conceit—collapsing the distance between the influencer's performed self and philosophical inquiry—marks a deliberate conversation with Agnès Varda and contemporary video-essay traditions; the constraint of the live format becomes both form and argument, which is rigorous work.
Two minutes live means every pause, every glitch in the frame, every moment Livia breaks character or doesn't becomes the whole film; if Boennec's choice was to strip away editing and let the performance *be* the camera work, that's the decision that either makes this or breaks it.