Berlinale Special : At Averroes & Rosa Parks

Geoffrey Macnab / Business Doc Europe – February 16, 2024

In his new film At Averroès & Rosa Parks (screening this week as a Berlinale Special), French documentary master Nicolas Philibert continues his exploration of mental illness and its treatments in French hospitals.

The documentary, a follow up to his Golden Bear winner On The Adamant, was shot inside two units of the Esquirol Hospital, part of the Paris Central Psychiatric Group. This is the second part of a triptych. The third part, The Typewriter And Other Headaches, is almost complete and will also be released in French cinemas later this spring. All three films are sold by Les Films Du Losange.

Philibert can’t hide his utter fascination with his subject matter.

“The world of psychiatry is something that haunts us, that disturbs us, that makes us think. Sometimes, we even fear it. It makes us go back into our trenches. It forces us to come out of our comfort zone. And it elevates us in a certain way,” the director holds forth on what motivated him to shoot these three films back to back.

Filmmaking can be a stressful business but Philibert found the experience of the trilogy to be cathartic and rewarding.

“The people you meet through psychiatry, they open our eyes and they do something with our humanity. They remind us about our limits and about our tremendous human souls – and that is enriching. They confront you with things you would never have thought of on your own. They enlarge your field of vision.”

Many of the protagonists of the new film are very troubled: suicidal, self-harming, prey to paranoid delusions. The psychiatrists, though, are able to coax out other sides of their personalities.

Philibert rails against the “clichés” about psychiatry and the tendency to treat those with psychiatric problems as if they are always “dangerous and aggressive.” In fact, as he quickly discovered, most of the patients are sensitive, funny and even wise. They just happen to be at a very vulnerable moment.

“Making movies is my solution to keep balance in my life,” the director explains how documentaries like these held him deal with his own mental stresses. “Being in touch with those people with psychiatric problems helps me and heals me in a certain way too. The people I film are very vulnerable but they reflect back something I have inside me too.”

The documentary is a study in contrasts. During the individual or group sessions with the psychiatrists, the patients tend to be relaxed and calm. They’re able to speak very frankly about whatever troubles ail them. However, we sometimes hear shrieks and wailing in the distance coming from other patients who are clearly in a far less comfortable state of mind.

“It’s important to me that we heard that [the screams]. We should not forget that this is a place where people suffer – and people come because they are suffering. Of course, when they arrive, some of them are screaming. They’re out of their minds. But I didn’t what to film that. I’m not the kind of guy who runs out with a camera to show human suffering but I do want to remind you as a viewer where you are.”

Philibert takes his ethical responsibilities as a documentary maker very seriously. It was “very important” to him that his subjects were aware they were being filmed and consented to his presence. He didn’t want to use subterfuge or to capture them at moments of distress or humiliation.

“It’s a film about words,” the director elaborates. The patients are being given a platform to express themselves and, for once, they have an attentive audience. “It’s a film about listening and also about letting people talk. This is kind of disappearing…because everyone talks and hardly anyone listens nowadays.”

But the psychiatrists do listen – and so does Philibert. He is a master observer who also pays careful attention to looks, gestures and silences. “Nowadays, especially on TV, everything is crushed when it comes to showing the way people talk…what you never see of when they repeat themselves. You never see the way they sit and the kind of space they take. All this is beautiful!”

There is an obvious political subtext to the trilogy. The director is drawing attention to the painstaking work done in the hospitals. This costs money and time. Politicians are often unwilling to make the investments necessary to allow such treatment to continue.

“They [the politicians] don’t really react. They don’t do the right thing. On the contrary, in many countries, psychiatry has been abandoned in recent years,” Philibert sighs at the lack of patience shown again and again by lawmakers and funders to the most vulnerable in society. “Time, as you know, is money. The neo-liberal world we are living in is full of experts, full of accountants, and they have different views.”