PETIT KAYAK
2026 · 2m
Directed by Guillaume Courty
Facing a historical monument, a family wants to take a photo of itself — but the child does not want to smile.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A two-minute film about a kid refusing to smile for a family photo at a monument sounds like it could be treacly garbage, but Courty's refusal to resolve the tension—letting the child's resistance *be* the point rather than something to overcome—is genuinely subversive in its smallness.
The film's economy recalls the precise tonal control of mid-career Koreeda, where comedy and pathos coexist without bleeding into sentimentality; the framing against the monument as both backdrop and ironic commentary shows a director aware of what whimsy demands of formal restraint.
What makes this work isn't the premise—it's Courty's choice to hold on the child's face through the silence, letting us sit with the discomfort rather than cutting away to resolve it, which transforms a family comedy beat into something genuinely tender and strange.