A Few Things Happening by a River
The premise: teenagers, dead for likes, and one body that doesn't come back
A Few Things Happening by a River opens with a social media stunt so familiar it almost disappears: a group of teenagers floating down a river, arms splayed, eyes closed, playing dead for the camera. It's the kind of 30-second bit that vanishes into the algorithm before anyone remembers it. Then one of them drifts away, and Daniel Soares—the film's writer-director—stops playing around.
The film runs 14 minutes. Released in May 2026 at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, it competed for the Short Film Palme d'Or. That's not a participation medal. Cannes competition slots for shorts are among the hardest in the world to land.
What's unsettling about this setup isn't that it sounds gimmicky—it does. It's that Soares doesn't treat it like one. He's asking a harder question: at what point does performance stop being performance? And when that line blurs, who's actually paying attention?
Why a 14-minute film about social media deaths landed at Cannes
The Portuguese-French co-production—handled by O Som e a Fúria, L'Oeil Vif Productions, and Soares's own Kid With a Bike Films—has the kind of transatlantic weight you don't usually see in shorts this length. The ensemble cast mixes Portuguese cinema veterans (Teresa Madruga has been a fixture in art film since the 1970s) with newer faces like Amarjeet Singh and Dilip Ahuja, and the dialogue switches between Portuguese and Hindi. Subtitles run in English and French—a signal from day one that this was built for festival circulation, not a domestic audience.
The craft is tight. Cinematographer Marta Simões shot in color at 1.66:1—a ratio that's wider than Academy standard but narrower than widescreen. It's an odd choice until you realize how perfectly it frames a body on water. The sound design (Tomé Palmeirim and Inês Adriana) works with a score by Meara O'Reilly, a composer who works in just-intonation intervals—microtonal tuning that makes the quieter moments feel like the ground's tilting slightly under you. Hard to say if that effect was intentional or a happy accident of editing, but it works.
What strikes me about the film's inclusion at Cannes is the curatorial framing—described as part of a lineup exploring "undercurrents of normality." The phrase could be standard festival-speak. Here it feels precise. These teenagers aren't villains. They're doing what teenagers do: performing for an audience that isn't quite there. And while they keep filming, something real happens downstream. Nobody's looking.
The bilingual disconnect that makes this land differently
The Portuguese-Hindi dialogue is never explained. It doesn't ask to be explained. That's confidence—the kind less secure filmmakers would rush to resolve with exposition. In a 14-minute runtime, there's no room for waste, and Soares seems comfortable with the kind of ambiguity that keeps the film from feeling like a PSA about phone addiction or a moral lecture about social media. It's not preaching. It's observing.
I keep thinking about that scene where the teenagers on the bank realize something might have gone wrong but keep filming anyway. It lands somewhere between satire and genuine dread—which is the exact tonal line Soares walks across the entire film. Drama and comedy aren't in conflict here. They're the same thing, just viewed from different distances.
Where to watch (and how to track availability)
A Few Things Happening by a River is available on major streaming platforms following its festival run, though short films have a scattered OTT life. It'll surface on one platform in France, another in Portugal, then pop up somewhere unexpected six months later.
Check Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker at the top of this page—it updates in real time as the film moves between services across different regions. The tracker sends alerts when availability shifts, which actually matters for shorts that migrate quietly without press. At 14 minutes with English subtitles, the barrier to entry is low. You can finish it during a lunch break.
Key details you need
- Director: Daniel Soares (also writer)
- Runtime: 14 minutes
- Release: May 2026 (Cannes world premiere)
- Rating: 0/10 (no rating system applies to festival shorts)
- Language: Portuguese and Hindi, with English and French subtitles
- Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
- Where to stream: Movie OTT aggregates current availability across regions—check the widget above for your area
- Genres: Drama, Comedy
Is it worth your time?
If you're the type who knows that a 14-minute short can sometimes say something a two-hour feature can't, yes. Soares uses every frame. The film sits in that uncomfortable space where it's both funny and genuinely unsettling—you're never quite sure which reaction is the right one, and that uncertainty is the whole point.
Fair warning: it's not a crowd-pleaser. It doesn't resolve neatly. But it stays with you longer than films twice its length.
