Jean Painlevé, fantaisie pour biologie marine traces the life and work of a man who played an essential role in the history of cinema. This atypical filmmaker, steeped in both scientific research and avant-garde thinking, was close to Jean Vigo, Alexander Calder, Luis Buñuel, and Sergei M. Eisenstein. He was able to create a dialogue between two disciplines: art and science. Thanks to their aesthetic quality, further enriched by the patina of time, the images of Painlevé shown in the documentary have lost none of their magic, their fantasy, or their poetry.