Mesdames et mes dames
2026 · 2m
Directed by Lorène Rua, Lucie Vander Meeren, Sarah Brossard, Corentin Del Fabbro
Tones: darkly comic, provocative
A candidate in a beauty contest prepares the speech with which she will proudly represent her beautiful country.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Four directors wringing dark comedy out of the beauty pageant speech—that tired ritual of enforced pride—feels like the kind of subversive premise everyone else walks past. Two minutes to demolish an entire genre of performative patriotism; that's the contrarian sweet spot.
The formal constraint of the speech itself—how these directors use the contestant's prepared words as a frame for satire—situates this neatly in a lineage of political comedy that weaponizes ceremonial language. Economical and precise.
The choice to keep the camera on the candidate mid-preparation, letting the speech's contradictions do the heavy lifting rather than cutting away for visual gags, is what gives this its teeth—restraint as the sharpest tool.