MoreThan Films Secures Locarno Title ‘Listen to the Voices,’ About the Wonder and Violence of French Guiana (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comJohn Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Spain’s MoreThan Films has secured international sales rights outside France to “Listen to the Voices” (“Kouté vwa”), from Brussels/Paris based Maxime Jean-Baptiste, in the run-up to August’s Locarno Film Festival where the film world premieres in Filmmakers of the Present.
Jean-Baptiste’s feature debut, the fiction film tracks young Melrick, 13, who travels from Stains in the Saint-Denis suburb of Paris to spend with his grandmother the summer holiday in Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana.
For Melrick, the summer may well mark him for life. It is a return to his roots, embodied in his desire to learn how to play the drum and become part of a local drum and dance band, Mayouri Tchô Neg.
He never seems happier, encountering also an early sense of his own identity as part of the Guianese diaspora in France. Yet it’s also his first encounter with larger ethical issues, as he finds the Guiana side to his family still devastated by the murder 11 years earlier of his uncle, Lucas, a charismatic drummer, co-founder of Mayouri Tchô Neg, and a DJ who introduced new Turbulence rhythms to the community.
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