NUMÉRO 56
2026 · 2m
Directed by Clémence Thomas, Sébastien Gill
Tones: contemplative, dark, provocative
In a near future where appearance has become an omnipresent criterion, a woman is summoned to answer her civic duty — judged on her looks.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Beauty pageant as civic duty is a decent inversion, but the satire lands where everyone expects it to — the film doesn't seem interested in actually *unsettling* the premise, just underlining it. Competent provocation isn't provocation.
Thomas and Gill situate this squarely in the lineage of Athenian civic ritual and algorithmic governance, and the formal restraint—that two-minute constraint weaponized—recalls the precision of Portlandia without the snark; this is the kind of mordant formally-aware work that generates real programmer debate.
The decision to hold the camera fixed on the woman's face during judgment, letting the verdict happen entirely off-screen while her expression absorbs it all, is the entire film—and it's enough, a single directorial choice that transforms a premise into something with actual emotional weight.