Clermont-Ferrand ISFF Review: God Is Shy (2025)
Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival
Labo Competition Winner
Nietzsche’s infamous quote, ‘God is dead,’ is sometimes misinterpreted as a clarion call for atheism and the dismantling of religion. But it was perhaps something more observational, a recognition that Western society was moving towards a more rational and scientific worldview. It is perhaps not an accident that Jocelyn Charles’ debut animation, God Is Shy, evokes this statement and reflects on how, in an age of supposed reason, we deal with the existential and the ungraspable.
A normal train journey, the scenery rushing by. Paul and Ariel pass their time by revealing their – literal – dreams to each other, sketching them down as if giving form to their fears will also keep them at bay. Enter Gilda, a fellow passenger who recognises one of the drawings, and who soon engages them in a story about her husband. As he sleeps, Gilda thinks she can talk to God through him. But the more existential her questions become, the more unstable things become. And as Gilda recounts more of her story, the more Paul and Ariel begin to feel things aren’t right.
An early evocation of Stephen King in the story is perhaps no accident, as, like King, Charles has a knack for taking the utterly mundane and ordinary and then pushing us into somewhere much darker and more unexpected. The animation style also helps with this feeling, a constant fracture between realism and the surreal, muted colours and dream sequences all trying to hold together lest the comforting ordinariness of everyday life is shattered in an instant. But the film becomes more fragmented, more staccato as it goes on, and the last few minutes represent a world in which everything we knew is no longer available to hold on to.
Yet Charles avoids obvious schlock (a few hinted moments of hinted body horror aside) and opts for creating an all-pervading air of dread. The stuff of nightmares is not the creature in front of our faces – it’s the one that is at the furthest reaches of our imagination.
Certainly, the film strikes an inner note of fear that seems to resonate with audiences across the world: a bow at Directors’ Fortnight 2025 has been followed by a slew of festival slots (proving popular at both genre and general festivals) and the Grand Prix at Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival’s Labo section. Its success – aside from being a marvellous technical achievement – is partly because, for all its genre trappings, it captures something of the mood of the modern era. That, for all our scientific and historical understanding, there still lurk things beyond our comprehension and – perhaps more scarily – completely beyond our control.
Original title: Dieu est timide
Year: 2025
Country: France
Language: French
Runtime: 15 mins
Director: Jocelyn Charles
Screenwriter: Jocelyn Charles
Producer: REMEMBERS – Ugo Bienvenu, Félix De Givry, Joséphine Mancini
Editor: Jocelyn Charles
Music: P.R2B
Sound: Matthieu Gasnier
Main Cast : Danièle Evenou, Alba Gaia Bellugi, Anthony Bajon
Sales: Manifest
