non-stop
2026 · 2m
Directed by Thalya Golshani
Tones: contemplative, tender
Tonight, Naïa is going to meet her boyfriend — and tonight, just this once, she hopes everything will go well.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A two-minute romance short about hoping things go well—that's the opposite of subversive, and the premise announces itself so earnestly that there's nowhere left to hide. If there's a twist or a formal rug-pull under here, it better be *devastating*, or this is just sincere, and sincerity bores me.
Golshani's restraint here feels deliberate—the contemplative tone and tender register suggest a filmmaker aware of the long tradition of intimate portraiture in short form, though at 2 minutes, there's barely room to establish the lineage she's working within.
Two minutes is nothing, which means every frame has to *earn* its weight; whatever Golshani chose to show—or not show—in Naïa's preparation, in the waiting, in that specific moment before the boyfriend arrives, that decision is the whole film, and I need to see if it lands.