Los bárbaros

The scouts

Périot's frontal cascade feels like it *should* be a radical gesture—democratizing the frame, flattening hierarchy—but the execution is almost too tidy, too aware of its own politics; it's the kind of essay film that makes you nod rather than squirm.

A formally precise intervention in the documentary essay tradition, where the horizontal grid becomes both democratic structure and methodological statement—the restraint of the formal choice (five minutes, one compositional logic) is exactly what gives the work its curatorial weight.

The decision to hold each portrait in that frontal, unflinching frontality—no romantic angles, no editorial mercy—is the hinge the entire piece turns on, and it's what separates this from becoming mere aggregation.