This is the story of Yves Chesselet, who as a young conservationist and wild spirit, forsakes the pleasures and comforts of modern life to live on an island with only seabirds and seals for company. Mercury Island, off the coast of Namibia, becomes the centre of Yves’ world when he pledges to wrest 15,000 seals off the island, ‘encouraging’ them to settle a kilometre away along the Skeleton Coast, to reclaim Mercury on behalf of the endangered gannets, cormorants and penguins that once thrived there.

The moral dilemma that ensues, because of his forceful intervention, is told through Yves’ diaries, and contemporary and past footage shot on the island. The film tells a multi-layered story, part epic tale of one man’s struggle to reverse the damage to a nature distorted by human greed, but also an exhilarating love story between Yves and ‘his’ Mercury, the island he names ‘the Holy mountain in the sea’. We learn everything about Mercury and its inhabitants through Yves’ point of view. And we cannot avoid falling in love with the inimitable ‘Jackass’ penguins, his closest neighbours.

Key to the telling are the private written diaries Yves kept whilst on the island and 25 hours of his own video diaries, recorded by his closest confidante and soul mate, ‘Vid’, his camcorder, who, along with the seabirds, kept him company for the eight years he it took to accomplish this controversial mission and proclaim victory for the birds.

We are immersed in the intimate journey of an eccentric hermit whose psyche is stripped down to essentials. At times, his dreams and daily life merge. This is a tale of exhilaration, despair, positive masculinity, and sacrifice. We come to understand a man shaped not only by his love of nature, solitude, and an untamed 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.