For the Papua New Guinea episode of France 3’s Faut pas rêver, Philippe Gougler flew over the Sepik river with Samaritan Aviation, the floatplane that carries patients from remote villages.
Along the Sepik, the river is the only road. For villages far from the nearest hospital, an emergency can quickly become fatal. Samaritan Aviation, a Christian non-profit organisation, has flown floatplanes in East Sepik since 2010, landing on the river to evacuate patients and deliver medicines and vaccines.
Its founder, pilot Mark Palm, has flown close to 2,000 medical flights. The organisation’s story was also told in 2025 in the film Saman Balus: The Story of the Flying Canoe.
The Sepik from the air
For Faut pas rêver, the sequence gave viewers the Sepik seen from above — its meanders, its villages on stilts — and a sense of the distances people here live with every day.
The film
| Programme | Faut pas rêver, Papua New Guinea episode |
| Broadcaster | France 3 |
| Presenter | Philippe Gougler |
| Our role | Fixing & logistics |
More about Samaritan Aviation: samaritanaviation.org. See also our article Filming the Sepik by dugout canoe.
Filming on the Sepik?
Canoes, floatplanes, villages: we plan the whole journey.