Acclaimed French nature photographer Vincent Munier now returns with his second documentary film, Whispers in the Woods, which takes him back home to the region in which he grew up: the forests and mountains of the Vosges of eastern France. He notably won the coveted Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award, presented by London’s Natural History Museum – widely considered the world’s most prestigious of its kind – in 2000, 2001 and 2022, making him the first to win the prize three years in a row. In the cinematic world, Munier is perhaps best known for co-directing The Velvet Queen [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (2001), a documentary about a Tibetan snow leopard that won him the César for Best Documentary Film. Whispers in the Woods has just world-premiered and competed in the Documentary Film Competition at this year’s Zurich Film Festival.

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The Arctic and snowy ecosystems are where Munier thrives in his visual work, so it’s no wonder that the white landscapes of his newest film are where it really shines - such images nearly constitute an inversion of the stark opening and closing images of fog wafting through dark pines. Alongside his years spent documenting snow leopards, Munier is also known for his work photographing Arctic wolves. This time, he uses the structure of a multigenerational story – himself, his father Michel and his 12-year-old son Simon – to generate a grounding point and a very slight narrative as they search for the elusive capercaillie, better known as a wood grouse. The director – himself one of four DoPs – films candlelit scenes of the three in a cabin in the Vosges, with a focus on his father telling stories to his son, further explaining the secrets of the forest.

It’s clear that Munier wants the movie to act as a forum through which to showcase his stunning footage – and for good reason, as the images truly capture animals as only a photographer’s eye could. Moving from majestic to adorable to hilarious in a few instants, he often even pre-empts birds’ emergences from their homes, at one point capturing an astonishing three different species of animals – two birds and a rodent – at once having made a tree trunk their home.

Outside of the delightfully layered soundscapes of the forest, Munier also makes a particular choice by cranking the sound up greatly at particular moments. In doing so, he draws our attention to the sheer power and distinctiveness of each animal’s voice: the grunting of a stag, the raucous cawing of cranes or the metronomic clicking of the wood grouse, to name a few. The film also benefits from the viewer’s own instinctive admiration and awe of the forest creatures, perhaps applying a dose of their own anthropomorphised curiosity, largely upon the small birds – and, more specifically, owls – that appear throughout.

Reading more about Munier beyond the film, we learn that his father and other members of his family worked – and continue to work – to protect the Vosges, leading to his very deep connection with the locale. However, in the attempt to preserve a certain minimalism of the film, we lose much of this important context necessary to capture our interest in these characters, which remain only as sketches through the 90-minute running time, although thankfully, the conversations never feel staged. In this manner, by the end of Whispers in the Woods, we are left wondering whether there might be a better format for these beautiful images than a feature-length film, despite its utterly captivating visuals.

Whispers in the Woods is a French production by Paprika Films and Kobalann Productions, with The Bureau Sales taking the rights to its world sales.