It’s in the Cineasti del presente section of the Locarno Film Festival that Listen to the Voices [+leggi anche:
intervista: Maxime Jean-Baptiste
scheda film], the debut feature by Maxime Jean-Baptiste, was unveiled as a world premiere. A filmmaker from the Guyanese and West Indian diaspora, his filmography (which includes the short films Écoutez le battement de nos images and Nou voix) digs into the complexity of colonial history, working in particular on the question of archives and the reconstruction of memories, an approach that he further pursues with this first feature.

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In fact, archival images open the film. We see a dense and moved crowd gathered to honour the memory of a young man brutally disappeared, a symbol of French Guiana’s recent history, made up of social and street violence, but also of the strength of a close-knit community.

Back to the present, that of Melrick, a young teenager back from mainland France for the summer holidays, which he spends with his grandmother Nicole. The two generations share a real bond, and they exchange in the kitchen, talking about suffering and love. Melrick feels as though he is alive again in French Guiana, where people play football barefoot day and night. His craziest dream would be to return to his country, to settle back here again, close to his people and refusing his mother’s exile. He sets off to meet memories, the sweet ones as well as the heartbreaking ones, which probably motivated her decision to leave. The memory of that night between 10 and 11 March 2012. “It was 10 years ago, but it’s like it was yesterday,” confides Yannick, a friend of Lucas’, the young murderer, haunted by his promise of revenge. “I see everything again. All the time.” The shadow of that tragedy – and of the others – looms over the city of Mont-Lucas. It is carved in the familial flesh of Melrick, who tries to understand this heritage, a trauma that quietly reawakens other traumas deeply inscribed in the ground. He will find this transmission in music, to the rhythm of percussions of the Mayouri Tchô Nèg band, where he takes the spot left vacant by his uncle Lucas.

Oscillating between fiction and documentary, the film is at once a coming of age story, following the trajectory of a young man attempting to build himself in the memory of an uncle sacrificed on the altar of the endemic violence that plagues the streets, an exploration of that memory with dreamlike overtones, and a reflection on inherited violence, a family heritage, but also a historical and colonial one. Elevated by a superb cinematography that sublimates bodies even more than the landscapes they inhabit, Listen to the Voices is a promising debut feature, which lets us see the missing images of a territory in pain, but rich in those who bring it to life and tell its story.

Listen to the Voices was produced by Twenty Nine Studios and Spectre Productions, and co-produced by Atelier Graphoui and Shelter Prod. The film is one of the light production projects helped by the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. It also received support from the New Dawn fund.