A fantasy and psychological short film in which a night-time escape turns into a confrontation with one’s deepest, most buried memories.
In the short film *Minuit*, fear does not stem solely from what lurks in the darkness. It also stems from what we try to forget. Through a fantasy narrative with horror elements, this short film follows a man confronted with his childhood wounds, on an inner journey where memories take shape and monsters become the reflection of a long-buried trauma.
It all begins in a dense forest, shrouded in night. A man is running, pursued by an unsettling creature whose presence seems to blend in with the shadows around him. His ragged breathing betrays an immediate, almost instinctive fear. Yet, in the midst of his flight, a single detail disrupts his progress: a child’s drawing left on the ground. It depicts a painful event from his past: his parents’ divorce.
Disturbed by this discovery, the man discards the drawing and continues on his way. But soon other leaves appear, forming a mysterious path through the trees. What seemed like a simple race to escape a predator gradually becomes a quest in which the stakes go beyond mere survival. Each drawing seems to bring him closer to a part of himself he has been trying to flee.
At the end of this journey, he discovers a child sitting in front of a rock, busy drawing the same unsettling figures. Their eyes meet: the man then realises that this child is a younger version of himself, a representation of who he was before the wounds began to pile up. Together, they are swept into a strange, disorienting space where reality seems to lose its contours.
This place forms a threshold between the outside world and the protagonist’s unconscious. A door appears in the void, opening onto a new stage of his journey. But the threat has not gone away. When the monster reappears, the man rushes through the door, which leads him to the house of his childhood.
The atmosphere then changes radically. In this silent house, every room seems steeped in painful memories. Muffled sounds of arguments echo as the man climbs the stairs leading to his old bedroom. In the mirror, he catches a brief glimpse of the child hanging a drawing on the wall. When he turns round, the child has vanished.
Drawings then begin to multiply on the walls, as if the memories refuse to remain buried. Whilst the monster forces its way in and climbs the stairs, the man desperately tries to tear them down. Until one particular drawing catches his eye. Instead of destroying it, he takes it gently and places it on his child’s desk.
This gesture marks a turning point. The monster comes to a standstill, then slowly dissolves. The marks that disfigured the protagonist’s face fade, though they do not disappear completely. The wound is not erased, but something finally seems to be easing.
Directed by Paul Navarro as part of Cinécréatis’s ‘Research and Creation’ project, *Minuit* thus explores the boundary between horror film and introspective narrative. The creature, inspired in particular by Wendigo folklore, is not merely an external threat: it embodies the character’s fears, inner turmoil and obsessive thoughts.
The visual world, dark and dreamlike, emphasises shadows, fragmented silhouettes and distorted spaces. The forest becomes a representation of the unconscious, whilst the family home embodies a frozen memory. The drawings, for their part, give tangible form to what cannot always be expressed in words.
In *Minuit*, horror thus becomes a language for recounting the intimate. Behind the pursuit and the apparitions lies a fundamental question: how do we confront what has shaped us, when our memories have themselves become our own monsters?
The film offers a nuanced answer. It promises neither oblivion nor a miraculous cure, but suggests that peace of mind becomes possible when we stop systematically fighting our past. Sometimes, all it takes is to look differently at what we have long sought to destroy.
