My Mercury

This is the story of Yves Chesselet, a 28-year-old conservationist and wild spirit, who leaves behind the pleasures and comforts of modern life to live on a remote island with only birds for company. Mercury Island, off the coast of Namibia, becomes the centre of Yves' world as he makes a cruel pact with nature to wrest 15,000 seals off the island and return it to the critically endangered seabirds of the South Atlantic. The moral dilemma that ensues is told through diaries, archive and contemporary and past footage shot on the island. Yves' sister Joëlle tells a multi-layered story, part environmental, part epic tale of one man's struggle to reverse a nature distorted by human greed. Key to this story are the private diaries Yves kept whilst on the island and 25 hours of his own video diaries, recorded by his closest confidante and soul mate, 'Vid', who along with the rare birds of Mercury kept him company for the eight years he lived there. We come to understand a man shaped not only by his love of nature, solitude and a spirit of adventure, but also by his troubled childhood and penchant for escapism. In the end, it's a victory for the birds ... but at a cost. This is re-wilding at its most intimate – Yves' intervention in this eco-psychological documentary reflects the kinds of choices we are facing in a world that we're destroying.