Listen to the Voices (2024)
French Guiana occupies a peculiar place in the cultural imagination: an overseas territory of France, geographically part of South America, historically shaped by the brutal legacy of the penal colony at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, and today home to communities whose lives bear little resemblance to anything you might associate with metropolitan Paris. It is a setting that cinema has largely ignored, which makes Listen to the Voices (original title: Koute Vwa, in Guianese Creole) something of a rarity straight out of the gate. The film arrives in the context of a wider, slow-burning conversation in French-language cinema about the experience of young men from immigrant and overseas communities, their relationship to violence, and the grief that accumulates when institutional indifference meets cyclical tragedy. If you have followed films like Lingui, the Sacred Bonds or Mustang, both of which use modest means to examine lives on the margins of formal French society, you will recognise something of that same impulse here, even if the geography and the specifics are quite different.
This is the debut feature from Maxime Jean-Baptiste, a Belgian-Guianese filmmaker whose background is in short films and documentary work, and that grounding in non-fiction is visible in every frame of the finished picture. The production is a co-venture spread across several smaller companies, including Twenty Nine Studio & Production, Spectre Productions, Atelier Graphoui, Shelter Prod, and Africalia, a Brussels-based organisation that supports African and diaspora arts. The budget is modest by any measure, and the film runs to a tidy 77 minutes. What is notable about Jean-Baptiste's approach is the decision to cast his own family and close circle rather than professional actors. The young Melrick at the centre of the story is played by the director's actual cousin, also named Melrick Diomar, and the film draws on real grief: the murder of Lucas Diomar, Melrick's uncle and Jean-Baptiste's relative, which forms the emotional core of the second half. That choice, to make something this personal with people this close to the wound, is either an act of courage or recklessness, and probably a bit of both.
The principal cast, then, is not a cast in the conventional sense. Melrick Diomar brings an unaffected, unselfconscious quality to the screen that no amount of coaching at drama school would easily manufacture. Nicole Diomar, as the grandmother, carries the film's most painful emotional weight with a quietness that feels entirely unrehearsed. Yannick Cébret, as Lucas's surviving best friend, provides a counterpoint perspective on loss and its aftermath, his scenes functioning almost as a corrective to the grandmother's more measured response. There is something in this ensemble that recalls the non-professional casts seen in films like Murina, where the proximity of the actors to the actual material gives the drama a texture that polished, professional performance can sometimes sand away.
Listen to the Voices (Koute Vwa), the 2024 debut feature from director Maxime Jean-Baptiste is a movie of two halves. The camera follows a young kid named Melrick (played by the director’s actual cousin, Melrick) who is visiting his grandma in a neighbourhood in French Guiana. They have this lovely, lighthearted banter about girlfriends and social media, and it feels like a sweet, family hangout. But that opening act is really just an appetizer, because the film quickly changes into something much darker.
As the runtime goes on, we realise Melrick’s family and the local community are still dealing with the heavy fallout of a tragedy from years past: the murder of Melrick’s uncle, Lucas. The conversations shift from cheeky teenage talk to grief, vengeance, and forgiveness, with Yannick (Lucas’s best friend) and the grandma offering very different perspectives on how to move on. What really struck me was the filmmaking style. Jean-Baptiste shoots this shaky, handheld which gives it a documentary vibe. Because the cast are essentially playing versions of themselves and drawing directly on the director's life, there’s a very real feeling to it.
It looks a bit low-budget at times, sure, but that raw, unpolished aesthetic actually works brilliantly in the film's favour, making the emotional beats feel incredibly authentic and lived-in.
It’s an impressive first feature that handles a personal subject with real confidence. Watching it, you can’t help but draw comparisons to John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood and Fernando Meirelles’s City of God, as it tackles the vicious circle of violence.
It’s not a flawless film, and the rough-around-the-edges production values might put some viewers off, but the sheer emotional honesty makes it a cracking watch. Listen to the Voices is a powerful, deeply moving piece of cinema that proves you don’t need a massive budget to tell a story that truly resonates.
Listen to the Voices sits in an honourable tradition of low-budget, semi-autobiographical filmmaking that trusts its subject matter to do the heavy lifting, and on that front it largely delivers. At 77 minutes it makes no unnecessary demands on your time, and for anyone interested in the textures of diaspora experience, or simply in what cinema can do when it is freed from the obligation to look expensive, it is well worth seeking out. Jean-Baptiste is a name to watch, and this is the kind of debut that suggests the next one will be something to reckon with. Not every first film needs to announce itself with a shout; sometimes a quiet, honest story told well is more than enough.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2026-06-13
