Paris by Night
2026 · 2m
Directed by Oscar Dubois
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Two bored young men wander through Paris at night, one filming while the other takes in the city's glowing landscapes, gradually rekindling his desire to know love again.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A two-minute love letter to Paris shot in the dark—which is exactly the kind of treacly premise I'd normally dismiss, except Dubois seems genuinely uninterested in making it feel earned or sentimental, and that refusal is what makes it actually work.
There's a quiet formalism at play here, a careful restraint in how the camera holds the glowing cityscape while the emotional arc whispers rather than declares itself—situated nicely in that lineage of European intimate portraiture that knows better than to overstay its welcome.
The decision to keep the camera in one character's hands—literally his hands, as the filmmaker—transforms what could've been standard voiceover melancholy into something tactile: we're not watching love return, we're watching someone choose to look again, and that choice lives in the frame rate and the steadiness of his grip.