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Between Fiction and Documentary: Maxime Jean-Baptiste's LISTEN TO THE VOICES at the 23rd FICM

Alan Rodríguez

As part of the 23rd Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), Arthur Lauters presented Listen to the Voices, by Maxime Jean-Baptiste. The film's cinematographer was accompanied by Daniela Michel, founder and director of the festival, who thanked him for his presence and for discovering this film at the last Curaçao International Film Festival, where it won the 2025 Yellow Robin Award.

“This is a film like no other. It deals with grief, resilience, but above all with love and the French Guiana, a territory that is not very well known and that we want to increase awareness about,” said Lauters. Listen to the Voices tells the story of an unruly young man who spends the summer in French Guiana at his grandmother's house to escape his turbulent life in Stains, France. 

At the end of his stay, he plays the drum to commemorate his late uncle, who died in tragic circumstances. This co-production between Belgium, France, and French Guiana was shot in two stages and did not have a screenplay or professional actors: “We had a way of working where we planned a set of sequences, gave the cast a theme for each sequence, and what we did was tell each of them a secret so that they would all come together at some point. We filmed sequences lasting between 10 and 45 minutes.”

In a Q&A session, the audience pointed out and praised the fact that they didn't know whether it was fiction or a documentary film: "The fact that they weren't professional actors and the very nature of the film forced us to work in a special way. We were a small team with limited resources. I would arrive in the morning to set up 360-degree lighting so that there would be no restrictions and they could go wherever they wanted," Lauters added.