They Don't Even Teach This At School
2025 · 1m · Denmark
Genres: coming-of-age, family, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
On a sunny day, Lou and Max sit outside blowing bubbles, and Lou wonders: do bubbles fly high enough to reach space? Max, who claims to have been to space, spins a fantastic tale of its secrets — and Lou must decide how much of the tall tale to believe.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A kid-and-adult bubble conversation sounds like every heartwarming indie short from the last decade, but the decision to let Max's lie hang in the air without correction—to let Lou's credulity be the actual subject—is genuinely weird in the best way.
The film traces a lineage back to the pastoral wonder tales of mid-century children's cinema, and its restraint—one minute, two characters, the question of truth—recalls the formal economy of early Pixar shorts before sentiment calcified into formula.
The magic here lives in that moment of Lou's face deciding whether to believe: instead of settling it with a wink or a reveal, the cut holds the ambiguity, and suddenly the bubble becomes something heavier than itself.