Screening of the Prix du Public & Prix Buffon : Le Coelacanthe, plongée vers nos origines

Directed by

Gil Kebaïli

Written by

Laurent Ballesta et Gil Kebaïli

Produced by

© Les films d'Ici - Andromède Oceanographie - ARTE France

Documentary, France, 2013, 90 min

Considered to be the greatest zoological discovery of the 20th century, the coelacanth was thought to have been extinct for 63 million years before turning up in a fisherman’s net in 1938. From that day on, this castaway from a bygone age has fired the imagination of countless researchers the world over.

It is the last living witness of that time, its body bears the traces of an exceptional episode - the day that a fish dared to leave the ocean to breathe in the air. This brave leap led to the advent of all four-legged animals, then man, several million years later.