VIRTUEL
2026 · 2m
Directed by Pascal Sauvalle
Genres: drama, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: dark, provocative, tense
Chiara Volkova, a former top model and rising actress, is at the heart of a dramatic situation after an accident on the set of her latest film; with the film at risk of cancellation, a high-tech solution emerges — a virtual clone to replace her missing scenes.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A premise that actually *commits* — swapping a human actor for her digital ghost isn't just sci-fi window dressing, it's a bullet aimed at the whole machinery of fame and replaceability. Two minutes is all it needs to make you deeply uncomfortable about what we've already accepted.
Sauvalle's tightness here sits in lineage with Cronenberg's body horror and Villeneuve's clinical dread, the mise-en-scène economical and the ethical questions embedded in formal choice rather than monologue.
The real coup is restraint — Volkova's performance *knowing* she's about to be replaced, that particular quality of resignation in a close-up, does more work than any VFX reveal could; it's the one human detail that makes the whole apparatus feel like loss.