In 1911, Henry de Monfreid left France to disappear in Abyssinia. He became a Muslim to penetrate the heart of the forbidden regions of Yemen and Ethiopia. A leather and coffee merchant, a pearl fisherman, arms and hashish dealer, and insatiable navigator, he braved the Red Sea and its storms. A photographer, illustrator and writer with a keen eye, passionate about freedom, he never stopped writing his own legend. This film is a portrait of this ambivalent character, who has fascinated generations of readers, while frightening others with his profound singularity, his all-or-nothing attitude and his ambiguity. As a writer of elsewhere, in a bygone era when the world was infinite and full of resources – a world where all it took was courage, and perhaps a bit of recklessness, to set sail on the seas with no idea of what the journey would bring -, Henry de Monfreid’s fable can also be understood as the tale of a sick West seeking to regenerate itself through contact with Africa.