REQUIEM AETERNAM
2026 · 2m
Directed by Yasmin Hassaine
Tones: contemplative, theatrical
In the church of a small country village, a funeral ceremony takes an unexpected turn with the arrival of the procession.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two minutes of a funeral that 'takes an unexpected turn' sounds like the setup for every overwrought genre pivot—but if Hassaine actually subverts the procession-arrival beat instead of leaning into it, then maybe there's something here worth the contrarian gamble.
Hassaine understands that funeral cinema has a lineage—Bergman, Kieślowski, the weight of ritual as formal container—and this 2-minute study seems to interrogate that tradition through a single structural rupture, the kind of measured disruption that rewards close viewing.
The real work here is probably in how Hassaine stages that 'unexpected' moment—whether it's a cut, a sound design choice, or the precise tempo of an actor's reaction—because in two minutes, one decision either crystallizes the whole piece or collapses it.