Q&A with Maxime Jean-Baptiste on April 5 (FLC) and April 6 (MoMA)

The relationship Melrick has forged with his grandmother is refreshingly candid and egalitarian: meals are cooked together, relationships discussed, feelings vented. The young boy has little choice in light of a tragedy that took his uncle, an event we witness only through a brilliantly abstract lens rendered by Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s feature debut, winner of a Special Jury Prize and Special Mention from the First Feature Jury in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente. Through ecstatic musical performances, close-quarter journeys through the beautiful streets of French Guiana, and dreamlike visions of the jungle, Jean-Baptiste has crafted a vision of trauma and recovery that, like too few films, understands life as distinct blocks of experience strung across one barely linear path.