[À la télé ce soir] Marlon Brando’s Polynesian Paradise

Legendary actor, Marlon Brando treated himself to a private island in Polynesia where the committed man put his environmental commitments into practice.

Godfather, tormented dock worker, incandescent bad boy… Marlon Brando was a legend of American cinema. It was also a fervent defender of the environment. A cause he fought for all his life. Particularly on his private island in Polynesia. A man of conviction and a great lover of science, Brando is said to have seen Tetiaroa for the first time in 1960, while he was in Haiti filming the Rebels of the Bounty. Marlon wanted to make it his refuge. Far from Hollywood. At the beginning of the 1970s, he launched the construction of a hotel. For him, his friends but also scientists. He organizes archaeological excavations, is interested in aquaculture and plans to found a school, or even a university, of the sea. The actor spends crazy sums of money there, but the comfort does not correspond to the tourist expectations of the time .

Nourished by his daughter Rebecca, his former assistant, those who continue his work on the atoll, film extracts and archive images, Dirk Heth’s documentary tells Brando’s Polynesian dream at the same time as he paints his portrait. That of a man passionate about National Geographic who liked to talk about everything except cinema and used his notoriety to try to make the world a better place. After his death in 2004, the construction of a new ultra-luxurious hotel started. No fossil fuels, no waste, minimal carbon footprint… Beyoncé stayed there. Obama wrote his autobiography there. DiCaprio even took inspiration from it for his own private island.