MEMOIRE VIVE
2026 · 2m
Directed by Jolan Péry
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy — torn between the mirror and his complexes, his clashes with his mother and the escape of football with his friends — beauty reveals itself in small gestures and in those who keep on loving.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A coming-of-age film about a boy caught between mirrors and football—it's exactly the kind of tender, expected territory that makes most people nod and move on, and that's precisely why I'm not the one championing this.
Péry situates himself within the Dardenne brothers lineage of intimate social realism, and the formal restraint—melancholic, observational—speaks to a filmmaker aware of how much beauty lives in small gestures rather than dramatic turns.
What lifts this into something beyond the familiar template is how Péry captures the specific weight of a 13-year-old's gaze: the way a mirror becomes both refuge and indictment, and how the escape into football with friends isn't transcendence but a harder kind of love—tenderness disguised as play.