Two limping souls in their sixties collide – literally – on a street corner. What begins as a clumsy accident becomes a quiet spark. Over coffee, they linger. They talk. And just like that, an unlikely intimacy begins to bloom. The Slug and the Snail traces the gentle unfurling of a connection born not of urgency, but of presence of two bodies long ignored by the tempo of the world, finding rhythm in each other. Anne Benhaïem’s film is a tender ode to queer aging, to liminality, to love that doesn't need to shout to be heard. With stripped-down direction and performances that pulse with lived-in truth, the film crafts a space of radical softness. It speaks to loneliness without pity, to affection without spectacle. It reminds us that desire doesn’t fade, it just changes shape. Benhaïem herself plays one half of the duo, bringing a raw, honest magnetism that makes the story feel lived rather than performed. This is cinema as whisper, as mirror, as gentle rebellion.

Two limping souls in their sixties collide – literally – on a street corner. What begins as a clumsy accident becomes a quiet spark. Over coffee, they linger. They talk. And just like that, an unlikely intimacy begins to bloom. The Slug and the Snail traces the gentle unfurling of a connection born not of urgency, but of presence of two bodies long ignored by the tempo of the world, finding rhythm in each other. Anne Benhaïem’s film is a tender ode to queer aging, to liminality, to love that doesn't need to shout to be heard. With stripped-down direction and performances that pulse with lived-in truth, the film crafts a space of radical softness. It speaks to loneliness without pity, to affection without spectacle. It reminds us that desire doesn’t fade, it just changes shape. Benhaïem herself plays one half of the duo, bringing a raw, honest magnetism that makes the story feel lived rather than performed. This is cinema as whisper, as mirror, as gentle rebellion.

short film by Anne Benhaïem

What happens in a brief love affair when a young woman meets a man in Paris and takes him back on a vacation to visit her mother in the Cevennes mountains.

After 30 years of exile in Paris, Jana travels back to Vilnius. She wants to see again the lake that Paulius, her first love, called “Walden”.

The man who leaves prepares his departure.

The man who leaves prepares his departure.