MOSH
2026 · 2m
Directed by Gaspard Exertier, Nathan Smigielski
Genres: dark comedy, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: absurdist, dark, provocative
Yvan, 30, lives as a recluse because in his world ugliness is punished; masked to hide his face, he ventures out — until his mask falls, the gazes freeze, and an anti-ugly militia gives chase.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A dystopia where *ugliness* is the crime and the state hunts the aesthetically inconvenient—most scouts would bury this under 'heavy-handed allegory,' but the absurdist sprint of a recluse's unmasking as instant manhunt is exactly the kind of premise that swings for something genuinely unsettling instead of safe.
The film's formal concision is admirable, compressing a Margaret Atwood premise into 120 seconds, though the tonal oscillation between sci-fi thriller and dark comedy occasionally betrays uncertainty about whether it's interrogating surveillance systems or punching down at superficiality.
What elevates this beyond concept-as-plot is the single choice to keep the protagonist's face obscured even during the chase—that held frame of anonymity before the reveal does the thematic work better than any monologue could, and it's the kind of restraint that signals real directorial instinct.