Alone
No team, no permanent interpreter, no apparatus. What people say to one person on their own is not what they say to a film crew. Light gear is not a small budget dressed up as a principle: it is what makes people talk to me.
We obsess over the problems we call unsolvable, and never go and look at what already works somewhere else.
So I am going. Four months alone in a converted van, from Morocco to Guinea, meeting communities to find out how else people live. Why? To look for how we might bring our lives back into the living world.
Leaving in January 2027
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I have left. The road journal fills up day by day — see the latest entries.
The project in brief
Three things that make the difference
There are already plenty of documentaries about how people live. The objective is not to be different — but the way this one is made, O Naturel, is built on passing things on.
A comparative approach
One set of questions, asked in every community. The same ones, everywhere, so the accounts can be compared. Repeating the same interview is what will turn a pile of conversations into groundwork on our connection to the living world.
What comes out of it
A documentary. Long pieces of writing, here. A steady thread on social media, before, during and after. And a body of interviews that will serve as groundwork for research in sociology and ethnology.
Latest writing
What I write while I wait to leave
Getting ready to leave is a story in itself, and it is the only moment when it can be told as it happens.
Who I am
A word from the one behind your screen
A student who wants to see things differently. Studying MIASHS, but not only that…
Read on
Preparation
Why I am going alone
It is not about money, and it is not courage. It is the only way I have found of being welcomed rather than received.
Read on
Research
The questions I will ask everywhere
They matter to the whole journey. They will be rewritten again before I leave, but here are nine to start from.
Read on
Support the project
A donation buys days on the ground
No production company behind this, no channel, no broadcaster. The project runs on grants, partnerships and donations. What you give goes into fuel, visas, insurance, storing the footage and editing the documentary.
One promise in return: I will say what I saw, including the parts that prove me wrong.
French non-profit association — Objectif Naturel · RNA W731007243
Following along
Three places, three rhythms
Day to day: first getting ready, then the trip itself. Gestures, faces where people agreed, breakdowns and refusals. One or two posts a week.
YouTube
The long formats: community profiles, the interviews worth taking time over, and the documentary when I get back.
The letter
Now and then, in your inbox. What I saw, what I understood, and what I did not. Longer than a post, closer than an article.
A student who wants to see things differently
Now studying MIASHS, but not only that…
My name is Flavio, I am 18 and I want to see things differently. I have always worked hard and done a lot of sport, and that is no longer enough to feel like I am living, so before I start working life I am going away to learn differently.
But why leave now? It is simple: I do not want to keep the set rhythm of studying without ever stepping out of that bubble to see the whole picture. So if I want my studies to fit me, I have to start by fitting myself.
Read more“If I leave tomorrow, I will certainly come back a different person”
Flavio WTranslated from the French