Olivier Dejean

Jean-René is a retired workman who has lived in Mâcon, France, since emigrating from Reunion Island at the age of 17. Today, for the first time ever, the quiet man recounts his story to his daughter. His journey is interspersed with enigmatic dreams and pains that are rooted in the wounds of the French colonial past.

Based on fourteen poems by Max Jacob put to music by Henri Sauguet and Robert Caby, Carte de visite is a particularly vibrant and faithful tribute to the overlooked great poet. Michel Zumpf makes good use of cinema and directs his film just like Max Jacob changed poetry and risked his life – in a unique and unsettling harmony between the most studied seriousness and the wildest imagination.