timeless
2026 · 2m
Directed by Delfin Erberdi
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A teenager's growing awareness of her image turns into an obsession, blurring the line between control and captivity — and how long can she live like that?
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Watches like a trap closing—the obsession angle could've been predictable teen-mirror-phone fodder, but Erberdi's refusing to let us off the hook with easy psychology, and that refusal is the whole point.
Formally precise in its escalation; the two-minute constraint becomes structural inevitability rather than limitation, situating itself squarely in the lineage of Haneke's discomfort and contemporary short cinema's suspicion of the image itself.
The decision to keep the camera as complicit as the teenager—watching her watch herself—is what transforms what could be a PSA into something genuinely unsettling; that single formal choice makes the runtime feel infinite.