Éléonore Saintagnan

At the tip of Brittany, the island of Ouessant—a grassy heathland swept by sea winds—is the last land before America. Given its geographical situation, it is a place that opens wide the doors of imagination. A Girl from Ouessant is an invented and, at the same time very documented, cartography of the island. This methodical statement starts as the diary of Éléonore Saintagnan, the resident artist-filmmaker at the Créac’h semaphore station, an ideal site for observing the surrounding area. Then, the account shifts towards a playful mise en scène, peopled with sailors’ wives, kelp burners, stories of little black sheep or countless shipwrecks… Drawing on the regional archives filmed in black and white dating from a time when the island lived mainly from fishing, the game begins.

Éléonore drives west. Her car breaks down in the middle of Brittany, France. She rents a bungalow there in a camping with a view of the lake, in which, it is said, lives a legendary beast. From mobile home to mobile home, she observes the present, summons the past and lets herself be invaded by fiction.