In Switzerland, while authorities believe they can solve the problems posed by wolves by killing them again, shepherds and ethologists are seeking other ways to coexist, reads the logline of Victoria Maréchal’s Inhabiting the Night, pitched as a Rough Cut at DocsBarcelona Industry. Day and night, they invent “attentive” gestures to share a common territory with the animals.
“Near cities like Geneva and Lausanne, the Jura mountains are home to many wild animals: lynx, deer, and, in recent years, wolves,” Swiss producer Gaspard Vignon (Marmotte Productions) tells BDE of his 105-minute project. “In summer, they share the high pastures with herds of cows. Far from the Swiss Alpine imagination, the Jura is a land of contrasts: dense, wild forests, but also spaces of passage and friction, where shepherds, pro- and anti-wolf activists, farmers on tractors, wildlife guards in jeeps, watchmakers speeding in Porsches to their factories, hikers, and nudists all cross paths. A multiplicity of presences coexists, often brushing past each other unseen. At night, the low bass of rave parties mixes with the roaring of stags.”
He continues: “After being exterminated last century, wolves returned to the Jura on their own five years ago. With the first attacks on calves came distrust, then discord. Tensions continued to rise between the all-powerful agricultural lobby and nature defenders, and in 2024, the hunting of 70% of the country’s wolves was authorized, even though wolves remain a protected species in Switzerland. Shootings are now common, yet the problems persist.”
Maréchal’s film follows several characters over the course of one summer. We meet François, a shepherd of 20 years, who is outraged by the ‘system,’ is passionate about birds, and curious about how animals live. He is on his last summer grazing, having decided to quit, fed up with farmers and their relationship to nature. His nine-year-old daughter Gemma visits for a month, and he passes on his caring perspective.
Eliane has been cowherd for twice as long, tending her heifers, speaking to them so they can defend themselves if wolves approach. But since political changes were introduced regarding wolf control, shepherds are no longer informed of lupine activity in the region, so she sets traps on her pasture “to see what her eyes cannot.”
Anouck tracks and monitorst wolves through camera traps to learn where they are, if new cubs have been born, and how they move. It is also she who, at night, scares off the wolves that come too close to the herds.
Corinne lives a nomadic life, desperate to avoid the electromagnetic waves of 21st Century existence. After months away, she returns to the Jura and reconnects with her pro-wolf friends, with whom she had acted to prevent shootings.
Director Victoria Maréchal also works as a sound recordist and sound editor, and “likes to explore new forms of listening through narrative and the sonic construction of space,” Vignon tells BDE. “In terms of mixing, the work consists of rethinking our sonic ‘hierarchies,’ which place the human voice at the centre while relegating everything else to side or rear channels. Human sounds will not be separated from those of the forest and the animals; they will become part of them. Disrupting our perceptual habits opens up a more curious form of listening and invites us to reconsider our place among other living beings.”
Vignon further elaborates on the visual look of then fil,m. “[It] offers a nocturnal quest. Night [becomes] a territory where one moves between the visible and the invisible, where sound reveals presences that remain unseen. Darkness makes us whisper, speak more softly, and sometimes speak less. At night, we listen more closely,” he tells BDE.
“Inhabiting the Night embraces the ‘voyeuristic’ dimension of devices originally invented for war or surveillance, revealing their seams through a formal experimentation around the desire to see,” Vignon continues. “Yet mystery persists through these strange, almost ghostly images. The wolf, cunning, outwits our scopic desire by slipping behind camera traps to remain unseen. It eludes us. And perhaps it is in this absence, in this persistent off-screen space, that the film finds its strength: in what we seek but never fully grasp.”
The film is currently at edit stage. In Barcelona Vignon is looking for high-level feedback on the project, as well as piquing interest both from sales companies and festival programmers. He is also looking to plug a “small but significant funding gap” of approximately €25,000. Theatrical distribution in Switzerland will be handled by Louise va au cinema, and the film is slated for broadcast on RTS late 2027 or Spring 2028.
“It is a cinematic experience that…re-evaluate[s] and explores our complicated relationship with nature,” Vignon signs off. “Inhabiting the Night is clearly a political manifesto and has an impact dimension, but not by addressing this debate directly. The question isn’t ‘pro or anti the wolf,’ but ‘how do we coexist, how do we share a common space?’”
