SOUS LES COUTURES
2026 · 2m
Directed by Lucie de Saint-Etienne
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A beloved stuffed toy is repaired under the eyes of a worried child, bringing three generations into tension through simple gestures and silences, and revealing the fragile beauty of what is damaged — and of what we learn to accept.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's going to call this precious and healing, which is exactly why it's suspicious—but de Saint-Etienne's refusal to let sentiment win, her commitment to the spaces *between* comfort and acceptance, actually earns the quiet. She's made a film about repair that resists being repaired.
The formal rigor here is unmistakable: a two-minute study in intergenerational communication conducted almost entirely through gesture and negative space, each stitch a formal choice that echoes the Hou Hsiao-hsien school of elliptical narrative. This is craft aware of its lineage—minimalist, composed, devastating.
The entire film lives in de Saint-Etienne's decision to stay on the child's face *during* the repair rather than on the hands doing the work—one compositional choice that transforms this from sentiment into something about what witnessing requires of us, and what damaged things teach us to see.