SHORT FILM ‘DIAGONALE’ REACHES 200 MILLION VIEWS ON YOUTUBE

by Natalia Albin Legorreta

French filmmaker Anne Thorens’s 2019 short film exploring the boundaries of consent, Diagonale, has reached 200 million views on the Short of the Week YouTube channel four years after its release. The short depicts a couple, played by actors Leonor Oberson and Cyprien Colombo, in the middle of a sexual encounter. When they realise they don’t have condoms, she clarifies her discomfort with continuing and explicitly says no, which does little to dissuade him. 

The film had amassed 100 million views as of October 2024, with that figure doubling in the last eight months. It is the most viewed film on the Short of the Week YouTube channel, which averages anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 views, and one of the most watched short films on YouTube overall (Taylor Swift’s All Too Well, one of the most viewed short films, stands at 106 million views). 

“It’s crazy for me to reach a number like that, I never imagined that this film would be seen so widely. In fact it’s ten times more than the population of my country so it’s a huge reward for a filmmaker to know that her film is being seen,” Thorens told Short of the Week back in October. “This film is considered as a question, not a judgement, not an answer. If it makes people question their intimate relationships, then that’s a great success, because that’s exactly what I wanted. Sexual violence concerns everybody everywhere,” she added. 

During its festival run between 2019 and 2022, Diagonale won six awards, including best film and best screenplay, received six nominations and was selected to more than 40 film festivals.