RACINES
2026 · 2m
Directed by Landry Mbanzu
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, provocative
To land a job, Samson must make a choice: keep his locks, or cut them.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A premise this loaded—identity, labor, assimilation—could've been a sermon, but Mbanzu lets the silence do the work instead of the speeches. Two minutes of restraint is rarer than a high-concept reversal.
The film inherits the lineage of contemplative portraiture, yet treads carefully around the weight of its own subject; the editing pace and compositional choices suggest a filmmaker aware of both minimalism and the gravity of what hangs in the frame.
The decision to keep Samson's deliberation visual rather than verbal—letting us read choice in a glance, a hesitation—is what transforms a social issue into something felt. That single restraint, that trust in the actor's face, is everything.