Calanques
Official selection, Nocturne Shorts Week 2026. Best short, Rhine Independent 2026.
The programmer's note
Twenty-one minutes, and almost all of it is walking and swimming, which sounds like a warning and is not. Mbeki has said she shot it with a crew of four and no permits, and the film has the specific looseness of that. Watch how rarely she cuts to a reaction. You get the information the way the other two kids get it, late. We put this in Summer, Somewhere because it is the best film we know about a day everyone in it will remember differently.
The film
It is the second week of July and the buses to the cove are full, so Naïma, Sonia and Jules walk in from the Luminy road with two litres of water and a bag of nectarines. The walk takes two hours in white heat. Naïma has planned the day down to the hour, which is not like her, and neither of the others has thought to ask why. Mbeki shoots the whole film in available light between eleven and eight, and lets the heat set the pace: nobody hurries, arguments start and die of exhaustion, the water is the reward and the film waits for it exactly as long as the kids do. The talk is about a boy, a brother's job, whether Sonia's mother will notice the scooter. Underneath it, Naïma is looking for a way to say one sentence. When it finally arrives it is badly timed and half swallowed, which is how it would actually happen, and the last ten minutes belong to the two who have to answer it.
