Producer’s Note

La Baleine is an unprecedented artistic endeavour. It is as much a cinematic epic, as it is a critical examination of human belonging within the fabric of life. This is a film that challenges our conceptions of cinema. Corbac is an unmistakable presence, an extraordinary human being, a character that leaps off the screen. This hero isn't your typical hero. Driving our story is his seemingly insane quest - one that is neither obvious nor common - to dissect a stranded whale and bring back its skeleton to the attic of his vineyard farmhouse.

This is a project with a very strong poetic thrust, harkening back to the simplicity of childhood.  The story unfolds in a quaint Mediterranean village in the 1980s. Corbac embodies a romanticism that we cannot accept in society; one we fundamentally do not want to understand. Alongside Corbac are a cast of other living beings: Blanche, the owl; César, the hunting priest; Couille-Molle, the dog; Gisèle, the barmaid; Lazare, the crow; Mathilde, his daughter; and other villagers.  

At first glance, La Baleine seems out of a fairy tale. Yet, it's rare to find such a force of reality in fiction: how does this story, being so grounded, manage to evoke the wondrous imagination of fantasy? Sylvère Petit's gaze, meticulously focused on framing the living beings around him, manages to place us into the heart of a new genre, the “Ecological Western”. As producers, this is a challenge we embrace. From the epic nature of its production, through to a story that reimagines the way we portray the world, to the inherent challenges of financing such a film - our adventure is rich.