Maxime Jean-Baptiste (1993), based between Brussels and Paris, grew up in the context of the Guianese and Caribbean diaspora in France. As a filmmaker, he delves into the complexity of Western colonial history by detecting the survival of past traumas in the present. His audiovisual and performance work focuses on archives and forms of re-enactment as a perspective for conceiving a living, embodied memory. His short films Nou Voix (2018) and Moune Ô (2022) were previous THFF selections, as was his short film Listen to the Beat of Our Images (2021), co-directed with his sister Audrey Jean-Baptiste. Kouté vwa (Listen to the Voices, 2024) is his first feature film.
Melrick, a 13-year-old boy, spends his summer vacation with his grandmother Nicole in Cayenne, French Guiana. 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.
A Q+A with Audrey Jean-Baptiste will follow the screening.
