One
1980 · 3m · Bélgica
Directed by Adrien Dusilence
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, tender
A three-minute meditation on the realization that one is a unit with the whole, and that what a person shares with the world is not food or money but a part of themselves.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's philosophically sincere in a way that could feel insufferable, but Dusilence never winks—the film commits so hard to its metaphysical premise that it loops back around to being genuinely strange, which I respect.
A rigorously constructed essay-film that inherits from the structural cinema and phenomenological traditions of the 70s avant-garde; the formal restraint and philosophical clarity place it squarely in conversation with Brakhage and Snow, though Dusilence's tenderness gives it an entirely different emotional register.
The decision to sustain a single contemplative register for three minutes without narrative momentum or visual spectacle hinges on trusting the viewer's patience—and whatever visual or sonic element anchors that meditation is what makes this work rather than drift.