Mes Vieux Démons
2026 · 2m
Directed by Thomas François
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A woman confronts the trauma she endured — the freeze, the anger, the slow work of resilience and acceptance — in a film about how some people overcome such trials, inspired by the true story of its lead actress.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Two minutes of trauma processing sounds like the kind of worthy earnestness that makes me run the other way — except François actually resists the expected catharsis, lets the freeze and anger breathe without resolving them into inspiration porn, which is braver than most.
A formally restrained approach to biographical trauma that understands the lineage of intimate European portraiture; the melancholic register and refusal of false resolution place it in conversation with a rigorous tradition of small-scale psychological cinema.
What makes this work is the decision to anchor everything in the lead actress's actual lived experience — that documentary truth seems to have infected every frame, and you can feel it in the restraint, in a performance that doesn't perform, that just *is*.