Client
University of French Polynesia
Year
2020
Deliverable
Short Film
Role
Writing, Direction and Editing
In 2020, a national contest asked French universities to demonstrate their commitment to the ecological transition. The University of French Polynesia trusted us with their entry.
It’s a strange exercise when you think about it. Asking a Polynesian university to prove it’s ecological is like asking someone who lives on a reef to prove they know the sea.
French Polynesia is one of the first territories of the Republic to take the climate crisis straight in the face — rising seas, coral bleaching, cyclones, erosion. The ecological transition here isn’t a master’s thesis topic. It’s what determines whether an island will still be habitable in fifty years.
We made the film starting from there.
The film
Not a film of institutional promises. A film that shows the UPF as it already exists: its relationship with the ocean that borders it, with the sun that powers it, with the students who walk in and walk out knowing what others don’t yet know — that an ecological future isn’t built in a speech, but in everyday gestures, lived, inherited.
Live footage, timelapses, the presence of the students. No animation, no slogan, no abstract promise. A university standing on its fenua, looking out at the ocean, training the people who will carry the responsibility for what comes next.
The contest was national. The ecological transition, on the other hand, is local everywhere — and it’s been urgent here for a long time.