Prismes
2026 · 2m
Directed by Shai Alon Van Mak
Tones: contemplative, tender
At the top of a mountain, Adam throws a stone and triggers an unexpected encounter with Lisa; between pain and confidences, two strangers rediscover beauty in imperfection.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Two minutes of mountain-top strangers-meet-cute feels like exactly the premise everyone else would greenlight, and Alon Van Mak doesn't seem interested in subverting that—which is fine, just not my oxygen.
There's a restraint here that suggests real familiarity with the lyric essay tradition and intimate portraiture, a film that knows its place in a lineage of contemplative encounters; the brevity itself feels like a considered formal choice rather than constraint.
The stone-as-catalyst is elegant enough, but what matters is whatever Alon Van Mak chose to *not* show us—the editing rhythm between pain and confidence, the specific moment where imperfection becomes visible—that's where the two-minute form actually earns its weight.