IDEAL Festival – Inhabiting Together: Plural Forms of Intelligence, Stories, and Territories

Thinking Territories Through Stories

At the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study, many research projects explore the connections between plural forms of intelligence, storytelling, and territories. They seek to foster dialogue between scientific, artistic, and civic forms of knowledge. They question the role of narratives in shaping our representations of environments, and examine possible forms of coexistence in the face of contemporary ecological and social upheavals.

The event on March 28 is part of this perspective. Here, cinema becomes a space for attention and reflection. A place where situated narratives are constructed. A place where collective experiences, attachments to territories, and ways of organizing shared life are made visible.

The three documentaries presented offer contrasting yet complementary expressions of these themes.
- Paradis questions the possibility of forming a community within a constrained space, observing relationships, tensions, and forms of solidarity that emerge in situations of confinement.
- Commune commune follows an experiment in participatory democracy, highlighting the hopes, frictions, and learning processes involved in inventing a more horizontal form of governance at the scale of a village.
- Saudades do Rio Doce portrays a territory marked by environmental disaster and explores the affective, political, and symbolic ties that bind inhabitants to a damaged river.

Each of these films, in its own way, raises the question of what it means to inhabit together. Each mobilizes forms of collective intelligence. Each reveals the decisive role of narratives in how a community understands itself, transforms, or resists.

Among the initiatives currently developed at the Institute, the project “Towards an International of Rivers and Other Elements of Nature” embodies this approach. It explores alternative ways of forming communities with living environments. Through the experience of the “Council of Witnesses,” in particular, it has enabled the experimentation of renewed forms of listening and deliberation. The event on March 28 extends this spirit, inviting participants to cross perspectives, engage in dialogue, and open up shared imaginaries.

This partnership with TU•Nantes and Le Cinématographe reflects the Institute’s commitment to bringing research into the public sphere. It affirms the importance of creating spaces where arts, sciences, and society can meet—spaces where connections between knowledge, narratives, and territories can be woven differently.