Souvenirs
2026 · 2m
Directed by Ethan Sitbon
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
As she gets ready for an appointment, Jeanne faces her reflection; each feature revives a memory - a loving grandmother, a courageous father, a first love - and through these fragments she rediscovers the true meaning of beauty.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A two-minute meditation on intergenerational beauty and inherited resilience—sounds like Hallmark until you realize Sitbon's betting everything on the editing, letting the mirror become a portal instead of a gimmick, which is either profoundly moving or a near-miss, and I'm genuinely unsure which.
Sitbon positions himself in a lineage of introspective portraiture—Valeska Grisbach, perhaps a touch of Chloé Zhao's attention to faces—and the formal restraint here (mirror-as-frame, memory-as-texture) elevates what could be sentimental into something more architecturally considered.
The revelation happens in a single sound design choice: the way Sitbon layers Jeanne's breathing over the reflections, making the mirror feel less like a literal device and more like an internal chamber—it's the decision that transforms a nice concept about inherited features into something tactile and irreplaceable.