The chains of beauty
2026 · 2m
Directed by Christelle Isida
Genres: drama, essay film
Tones: contemplative, provocative
The film explores beauty's double face — one that liberates and one that imprisons — revealing, beyond appearances, the violence and injustices suffered by women, and calling for an authentic beauty, that of the soul and of freedom.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A two-minute essay film about beauty-as-oppression feels like it arrived DOA—the premise is workshop-ready but the execution doesn't subvert or surprise, just illustrates the thesis you already knew walking in.
Isida's formal restraint here—the way she lets visual contradiction and contemplative pacing do the argumentative work rather than spelling it out—situates this firmly in the essay-film lineage of filmmakers thinking through aesthetics as politics, and the compression pays dividends.
The singular stroke is how she uses negative space and silence to create pressure; in two minutes, there's a deliberate editing choice around when NOT to cut, when NOT to show, that transforms this from a statement into an experience.