Listen to the Voices

Kouté vwa / Listen to the Voices

Maxime Jean-Baptiste, Belgium, France, French Guiana, 2024, 77′

Through the eyes of a young boy, this highly personal documentary fiction film explores the tragic consequences of colonial rule in French Guiana. 

Melrick, a 13-year-old boy, spends his summer vacation with his grandmother Nicole in Cayenne, Guyana. His presence and his desire to learn how to play the drum brings back the specter of Lucas, Nicole’s son, also a drummer, who died in tragic conditions 11 years earlier. Faced with the grief that haunts his family and Lucas’s best friend’s desire for revenge, Melrick seeks his own path to forgiveness.

“My film tries to create the sensitive and delicate conditions for an intercultural dialogue which, as we know, has become very tense in our societies because of the resurfacing of buried histories. This film is therefore intimate, but it also aims to be a tool for discovery, debate and social cohesion.” – Maxime Jean-Baptiste

Maxime Jean-Baptiste grew up in the context of the Guyanese and West Indian diaspora in France. His work delves into the complexities of colonial history, focusing on archives and forms of reconstitution to conceive a living, embodied memory. His films have travelled to numerous festivals (CPH:DOX, Hot Docs, ISFF Clermont-Ferrand, IDFA, Berlinale Forum). Kouté vwa (2024) is his first feature film.