Les Voix du Large

As Gérard Château, one of the film’s key figures, puts it: "When you’re a community of 5,000 people clinging to a ten-kilometer-long rock like the Île d’Yeu, it’s a bit like being on a boat—you have to get along." But is getting along really that easy? Filmed over the course of a year and centered on the local radio station Neptune FM, this film captures the islanders' answer to the challenge of living together. It tells the story of an insatiable desire to reach out to others and build something together, despite headwinds and shifting tides. In recent years, we have been living in a society that is more violent and chaotic—one where the tendency is to retreat into oneself rather than discover the other. Xavier Liébard has spent years exploring the concept of community. He sought to address the risk of insularity—of sticking only to one’s own kind—within the ultimate setting for possibility and utopia: an island.