Turquoise waters, white sand beaches, coconut trees… Welcome to the idyllic setting of Wallis and Futuna. But behind the postcard there is a more cruel reality: the inexorable retreat of the coastline in the face of erosion. Coming from a family of fishermen deeply attached to the cultural and natural heritage of her island, Malia, 28, refuses to see her disappear. Faced with this threat, the young woman fights to restore the mangroves by planting mangroves to retain the sand. His fight to save his territory is far from isolated.
In « Oceania, the guardians of the ocean », Raynald Mérienne crosses the Pacific to give a voice to those who, from Hawaii to Easter Island (Rapa Nui), from New Caledonia to the Marquesases, fight against overfishing, plastic or coral bleaching. The common thread of the film, Solomon Pigo, known as « Uncle Sol », a Hawaiian guardian figure, has devoted his life to preserving the ocean for more than fifty years.
An Oceanic epic
The documentary could have sunk into a catalog of good ecological practices, but the director, a specialist in Overseas Territories, avoids this pitfall by building his film as an Oceanic epic, where each territory reveals a specific threat and a response drawn from collective memory and ancestral cultures.
On Easter Island, Ludovic organizes collections of plastic debris rejected by the waves and tries to alert the world to the extent of this pollution. In the Marquesas, faced with overfishing and industrial fishing, Humukohea, a professional diver and cultural leader, campaigns for rāhui, a traditional Polynesian management mode that allows resources to regenerate.
In New Caledonia, Théophile watches over the coral reserve created by his father, threatened by marine heat waves, and revives the traditional canoe, a symbol of mobility and cultural link between the islands. On Big Island, one of the main islands of the Hawaiian archipelago, Roxane protects humpback whales, considered in local tradition as the ancestors of men.
Between sumptuous images and embodied testimonies, Raynald Mérienne shows a fragile but stubborn collective resistance to preserve the ocean, its islands and its inhabitants in the face of disaster.
source : nouvelobs
