
Moored on the Seine in central Paris, not far from the city’s main cultural landmarks, is a huge, floating barge known as The Adamant, an institutional psychotherapy day centre where patients are “co-authors of their care.” A sanctuary for adults with mental disorders, the institution is unique in both architecture and approach, offering its visitors a range of counseling, education, and cultural activity, with a special emphasis on art therapy. Indeed, its focus on the latter is such that Nicolas Philibert’s humane documentary at times plays like a paean to outsider art.
Winner of the Golden Bear at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, the latest from veteran documentarian Nicolas Philibert (Etre et Avoir) offers a compassionate look at the human workings of this singular care-based facility. Less focused on institutional nuts and bolts than on the patients, the film maintains an intimate but respectful distance from its subjects, always allowing them to speak and reveal themselves on their own terms. Tender and perceptive in equal measure, it is a moving testament to the vital importance of human expression.
Nicolas Philibert
France
2023
In French with English subtitles
Golden Bear, Berlin 2023
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Miléna Poylo & Gilles Sacuto, Céline Loiseau
Cinematography
Nicolas Philibert
Editor
Janusz Baranek, Nicolas Philibert
Also Playing
Sinners
This year's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.
The Graduate
In The Graduate Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman, 30 playing 20 with masterly understatement) comes home from college and is surprised to be seduced by the wife of his father's business partner, Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft).
blur: To the End
Now in their late 50s, Britpopsters blur (of Song 2 fame) do a celebratory lap of Great Britain culminating in their first ever Wembley Stadium show in this appealing observational doc. A companion piece to the concert film Live at Wembley Stadium.