YURI
2022 · 10m · France
Directed by Baky Dia
Tones: dark, melancholic, tense
In a near-future world of water scarcity, Chris Dolo — a technical engineer for water-privatization firm Aqua-Space — raises his 11-year-old son Yuri, a precocious astrophysics enthusiast who dreams of life among the stars. As they navigate life without a maternal presence, a supernatural entity begins to watch them.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
YURI does the thing everyone pretends they want—genre fusion without the winking—but then actually commits to the supernatural turn instead of chickening out into metaphor; most sci-fi drama would've played it safe, and that refusal to choose sides is exactly why it works.
Dia channels a lineage running from Tarkovsky's meditative sci-fi through contemporary climate-anxious cinema, but the film's real precision lies in how it situates the supernatural not as rupture but as a formal extension of the domestic unease already embedded in every frame.
The restraint in how Dia lets Yuri's astrophysics monologues breathe—trusting the boy's genuine passion to carry emotional weight without scoring it—is what transforms what could've been maudlin grief cinema into something that lands with real specificity and ache.
Festivals
- Paris Short Film Festival 2023
- Amsterdam Shorts 2022, Best Science Fiction
- Mashariki Africa Film Festival 2023
- African Film Festival NY 2023