Venus
2026 · 2m
Directed by Emma Fuensanta, Matthieu Gerey
Genres: drama, fantasy, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Since her best friend left, Florence has lost her taste for life. Before a painting she cannot stop contemplating, she admires the beautiful young woman on the canvas — everything seems to separate them, until a surprising encounter teaches her the real beauty of things.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two minutes of a woman staring at a painting that then... becomes real? It's the kind of precious, literalist fantasy that everyone applauds for being 'tender,' but there's nothing here that surprises—grief to epiphany, canvas to flesh, the whole thing plays like a greeting card that learned to move.
The formal restraint is what haunts: two directors holding a single shot of contemplation long enough that the frame itself becomes the argument, and then the editing decision to collapse the boundary between painting and life—it's a film that trusts its lineage in the romantic sublime while interrogating what the canvas actually owes us.
What works is the sound design sitting underneath the silence—there's a specific frequency, a hum or breath that keeps the painting alive before anything happens, and it's that acoustic choice that makes the figure on canvas feel less like a plot device and more like something genuinely watched into being.