Regardez-moi
2026 · 2m
Directed by Paul de La Pallière
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
David's and Hakim's gazes intertwine; their meeting will not change their past, but it could warm their souls.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Two minutes of gazes meeting doesn't sound like much until you realize the film is betting everything on the idea that looking is enough — no plot machinery, no reconciliation fantasy, just the radical premise that presence itself can matter. It's formally restrained to the point of provocation, which means it either transcends or evaporates, and I suspect de La Pallière knows exactly which.
Regardez-moi situates itself in a lineage of intimate portraiture reaching back through Bresson and into contemporary European minimalism, where the edit and the held frame become moral instruments. The film's discipline — its refusal to interpolate meaning or resolve the emotional tenor of the encounter — feels like it's been carved from something classical.
The entire film pivots on a single recurring cut: the moment the gaze locks and holds, the edit doesn't puncture it with reaction or consequence, it just lets it breathe across the frame. That choice — to trust the stillness instead of amplify it — is what turns two minutes of eye contact into something that actually moves.