Le chant des baleines
2026 · 2m
Directed by Raphaël Duchalet
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, sensual, tender
This film offers the raw experience of swimming with whales in French Polynesia, centred on the songs the male emits underwater; with no re-enactment, sound design or AI, every sound is real, exactly as heard beneath the surface.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone's obsessed with whale documentaries, but this one refuses the obvious move—no Attenborough whisper, no manipulative score, just the animal itself doing the work. It's almost boring until you realize that's the whole subversive point.
Duchalet understands the essay film tradition of stripping away mediation; the formal restraint—letting unadorned hydrophone capture speak—positions this in a lineage from Koenig to contemporary nature cinema that trusts the real over interpretation.
The decision to use *only* authentic underwater sound, zero design intervention, is what makes two minutes feel like an hour of presence; that constraint is the entire film, and it works because Duchalet committed to it absolutely.