Julien Meynet
Corsican filmmaker Julien Meynet is developing his first feature film project entitled Torem in Providenza. Inspired by an ancient Corsican funeral ritual, the film depicts a horse tasked with choosing the burial site of a deceased person, questioning mourning and the relationship between humans and animals.
During his residency, the author undertook two weekly hikes from Providenza to the Tenda plateau (a five-hour round trip), where one of the island’s last herds of wild horses remains. There, he established a base camp at the foot of Monte Astu, allowing the animals to get used to his presence in order to film and observe their behavior, before returning to write in Providenza. This immersive work, carried out in dialogue with equine mediator Laurence Derik, closely links cinema, ethology, and the Corsican landscape.
During the residency, I worked on the final stage of writing my first feature film, TOREM. The story draws inspiration from an ancient Mediterranean funerary rite in which the horse — a psychopomp figure — guides the passage between the living and the dead.
Providenza is located exactly three hours’ walk from the Tenda plateau, where the island’s last herd of wild horses still roams. As part of the film’s development, I needed to understand and observe how such a group lives, as it holds a central place in the story.
I’ve often heard that horses can sense a person’s heartbeat from a distance — that it’s how they gauge an individual’s level of aggression or stress. I must admit I easily embraced that theory, without really understanding how it works. The technology of horses still largely escapes me.
But I came to understand at least one thing: meeting a horse means, first of all, slowing down your heartbeat. It’s not every day that the very possibility of encountering another living being depends on the rhythm of your own heart.
I made countless trips back and forth between the residency and the plateau, alternating periods of writing with moments of on-site observation. It was a kind of experiment. I wanted to feel, in an empirical way, what it’s like to spend long hours immersed solely in the presence of these animals, who live in self-sufficiency in the mountains, without human contact. I realize now that this experience brought a certain radicality to the film’s writing: the horses’ physical and sonic language became a central part of the narrative.
The residency was therefore a key moment in the writing process, allowing the screenplay to evolve toward its final form.
« When I led the horses to the stream, I heard the cuckoo call,
I heard the cuckoo call.
It spoke to me in its own tongue: They lay your love beneath the stone.
Ah, cursed bird, what do you say?
I held her close just yesterday.”
But when I reached the moorland wide, I heard the church bells toll.
And when I crossed the chapel door, I heard the priests intone.
I struck my foot against the bier, Awake, awake, if you still dream!
No, I do not sleep, nor do I rest — I wait for you in hell.
See, my mouth is full of earth, And yours still full of love.
Beside me lies an empty place
— It’s yours, my dear, my dove. »
When I Led the Horses to the Stream
Traditional-inspired — after the anonymous 15th-century song
