StoryShort: the first duanju app focused on French-language series

We had already followed this project when it was called StoryTV, at the time when Alexandre Perrin and Adrien Cottinaud presented it as a French initiative dedicated to vertical micro-series. The name has since evolved to StoryShort, an English title for a French application featuring series in French. This reflects a desire to position itself in a global market while avoiding confusion with similar names, particularly in India with the “Story TV” application.

During the screening organized by Studio Phocéen in Paris on June 14, 2025 , the two directors explained their method: 9:16 full-screen video, frontal acting, close-ups, micro-episodes, and a dramaturgy designed for mobile attention, with very close cliffhangers.

Three months later, the French context was hardening: at the La Rochelle Fiction Festival, the president of the CNC, Gaëtan Bruel, described micro-dramas as "the perfect counter-example." It is in this climate that StoryShort emerged, choosing to move forward despite institutional reluctance.

A few months later, the project changed scale. StoryShort is no longer a platform in development or a simple distribution concept: it is an application distributed on stores, driven by the idea that duanju is no longer just imported or commented on in France, but that it can now be produced, organized and marketed locally.

In terms of form, StoryShort takes up the fundamentals of the duanju language: full screen vertical, very short episodes, accelerated narration, editing designed to hook immediately, and seriality structured by the permanent rebound.

The featured catalog clearly prioritizes readability, with titles that offer archetypes and immediate promise, typical of vertical dramas: forbidden love, power figures, secrets, and status reversals. The strategy is clear: to produce simple, immediately understandable narrative triggers that allow the viewer to become engaged within seconds and continue watching.

The mobile version of a soap opera, and the idea of a format that breathes new life into television

From a French perspective, this style evokes established television series such as: Au nom de la vérité, Mon histoire vraie, Si près de chez vous, Face au doute, Le jour où tout a basculé, and their spin-offs like Petits secrets entre voisins. The same logic of short stories focused on intimacy, the same domestic situations, the same ordinary secrets that escalate into dramas, the same efficient production and storytelling designed for repetition and seamless transitions.

The difference is that the writing speed acts like a dusting off. The DNA of the popular series is retained, but compressed, made more dynamic, more compatible with fragmented attention spans, and more directly monetizable in an app-based environment. In other words, it's not just a new medium: it's a way to modernize a familiar television language by making it natively smartphone-ready.

This is precisely where StoryShort's future could be of interest to producers and media outlets already familiar with this type of storytelling. Companies that create narratives based on clear stakes, immediate hooks, rapid plot twists, and narrative performance could see this type of application as a complementary outlet or a testing ground.

If StoryShort manages to establish a regular publication schedule and sustainable consumption, it could become, in the medium term, an attractive platform for French players looking to rejuvenate their formats, test new uses and capture a mobile audience without abandoning popular fiction.

Discover the app on Google Play

Sources:

• Full screen – January 22, 2026

• Business Insider – September 17, 2025