Martyre
2026 · 2m
Directed by Lorena Santana
Genres: coming-of-age, dark comedy, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, provocative
Where beauty emanates from suffering, candidates will do anything to be the most beautiful; at her first audition, Maeva discovers the sad reality of being constantly compared to the others.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A two-minute short about beauty pageants and self-harm could've been heavy-handed moralizing, but Santana's refusal to sentimentalize Maeva's desperation—treating her cruelty to herself as just another audition strategy—actually lands as genuinely subversive.
Santana works in the tradition of body-horror and performance anxiety cinema, but the melancholic frame and formal restraint elevate what could be exploitation into something genuinely contemplative about the machinery of comparison.
The entire weight rides on how Maeva's face moves in those audition moments—the micro-shift from hope to resignation to manufactured brightness—and Santana trusts that single performance choice enough to let the camera just *sit* with it rather than cutting away.