THE CURSE OF PERSEPHONE
2026 · 2m
Directed by Clementine Lelizour
Genres: experimental, fantasy, horror
Tones: dark, provocative, surreal
A young vampire, locked in his bathroom, scrolls Instagram and compares his body to unattainable standards; fascinated by an image that crystallises desire and shame, he begins a ritual of transformation mixing makeup, DIY and self-mutilation, his body cracking further the more he tries to conform, until the final explosion.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A vampire scrolling Instagram and ritually self-mutilating to chase impossible beauty standards—it's exactly the kind of premise that makes you go 'wait, WHAT?' before you realize Lelizour's weaponizing body horror against influencer culture itself; genuinely subversive and the kind of short that'll piss off half the room while the other half gets it.
Lelizour situates this within a lineage of body-as-text experimental horror—Tusk, Angst, the New French Extremity—but the editing's what separates craft from provocation; each cracking-body moment is rhythmically considered, building a visual language of transformation that feels both contemporary and formally rigorous.
The singular choice here is the decision to literalize the metaphor: instead of metaphorical self-destruction through social media, the body actually cracks and splinters—it's one conceptual leap that transforms a smart premise into something that *feels* genuinely unsettling on a visceral level.