Experiencing Interruptions?

Pique-Nique

Two young women settle on a pebble beach for an improvised picnic. Around them, birds gather. Their flight, their cries, their way of approaching gradually transform the situation.

  • Christophe Schaeffer
    Director
  • Christophe Schaeffer
    Writer
  • Christophe Schaeffer
    Producer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Pique-Nique
  • Project Type:
    Experimental
  • Runtime:
    6 minutes 36 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 1, 2025
  • Country of Origin:
    France
  • Country of Filming:
    France
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital 4K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • The Little Croco Festival

    December 1, 2025
    WINNER - Best Experimental
Director Biography - Christophe Schaeffer

Christophe Schaeffer is a French multidisciplinary artist — writer, poet, philosopher (PhD), visual artist, and lighting designer. His work spans theatre, contemporary dance, visual arts, music, and cinema, exploring perception, time, and the fragile boundaries between image and presence.
Since 2022, he has developed a body of experimental films extending his research into moving images. His cinematic practice revolves around duration, slowness, and the vibration of reality, often using extreme slow motion, long focal lengths, and mobile phone cinematography.
His films have been presented in international festivals and artistic contexts, and pursue a form of poetic cinema of attention, where images remain inhabited by gesture, silence, and lived experience.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Pique-Nique begins with a simple situation: two young women settling on a pebble beach for an improvised picnic. Nothing seems to call for conflict, and yet something slowly begins to shift.
What interested me was the role of territory — not as a backdrop, but as an active force. The birds gradually approach, observe, and sometimes resist. The space itself seems to respond.
Little by little, the balance of the scene changes. The birds move freely through the frame, while the human bodies appear slightly displaced, almost like visitors.
A subtle humor emerges from this reversal: the situation remains light, but the gaze begins to shift.
The film observes a fragile coexistence between humans, animals and place — a space where relations remain open, unstable, and constantly renegotiated.