Ma vieille caméra
2026 · 2m
Directed by Lili-Louise Perrin
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
When Lila finds her old camera, keeper of the images of her past, she can no longer run away: the faint echoes of her mind swell into an ocean of emotion.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A camera-as-memory-vessel metaphor is so well-trodden it's basically a cliché, and this plays it straight—melancholic, contemplative, exactly what you'd expect. Perrin's not interested in subverting the form; she's genuinely invested in the sentiment, which means it lands for some people and leaves me cold.
Perrin situates herself squarely in the lineage of personal essay films and memory-work cinema—the deliberate pacing and the object-as-anchor feel considered, even reverent. It's formally sound work that knows what tradition it's speaking to, though it doesn't push against the frame in any particular way.
Two minutes to collapse past into present through a single prop—that's a constraint that forces real precision, and Perrin's choice to let the camera itself become the emotional throughline (rather than, say, the photographs) is what transforms a familiar idea into something that *feels* discovered rather than performed.