Mémo
2017 · 5m · Francia
Directed by Ellis Ka-Yin Chan, Marine Varguy, Tena Galovic, Yen-Chen Liu, Zozo Jhen
Tones: contemplative, tender
Louis, a retired man, wants to keep his independence and resists the overprotective efforts of his daughter Nina.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Five directors on a 5-minute family drama about an old man resisting help sounds like a recipe for focus-grouped blandness, but if they pulled it off, it's probably because they found something genuinely weird in the specificity—though I'd need to see it to believe it.
A multi-director collaboration on intergenerational tension suggests either formal ambition or chaos; the tender-contemplative register implies these filmmakers understand how restraint and cutting can articulate what dialogue won't, which is the only way this premise avoids sentimentality.
Five voices steering one five-minute story is a high-wire act, and the fact that it lands as 'tender' rather than fractured tells me there's a single directorial choice—maybe in how they shoot Louis's hands, or the pacing of a refusal—that knits the whole thing into coherence.