Réfugié / Refugee
2024 · 4m · France
Directed by Suki
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A displaced man walks through a frozen wasteland accompanied only by a polar bear.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A man and a polar bear walking through ice for three and a half minutes — the matter-of-fact folktale logic is the entire appeal, and honestly that's enough. Brief and unbothered, which I appreciate.
The polar bear as matter-of-fact companion places this in the lineage of La Jetée's still-image storytelling and The Red Turtle's wordless animism — a properly mythic register. Under four minutes, original text by Stéphane Debureau; promising.
3:41 with original music by Jean-Philippe Gréau, produced by Utopi — a man and a polar bear walking through ice as a single sustained image. At under four minutes a folktale matter-of-factness is the only way to play it; Suki's page suggests this is treated as illustration-meets-cinema.