16/02/2024 - BERLINALE 2024: After his Golden Bear winner On the Adamant, Nicolas Philibert is back with a second instalment in his trilogy about mental illness, which is even more impressive than the first

"What do you think about it?" This tag on the wall of Esquirol Hospital - which is situated on the edge of Paris and is where Nicolas Philibert set up shop (adopting his usual attentive and immersive artistic approach) to make the remarkable Averroes & Rosa Parks [+see also:
trailer
interview: Nicolas Philibert
film profile], which was unveiled in the 74th Berlinale’s Berlinale Special line-up - could just as easily summarise the filmmaker’s intentions, as he first set about shooting this second instalment of his trilogy on mental suffering, which follows on from On the Adamant [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nicolas Philibert
film profile] (awarded last year’s Golden Bear and now nominated for the LUX Audience Award).

For thoughts are definitely at the heart of this film: how they send some people off the rails and how these souls strive poignantly to get back on track and avoid losing themselves to anxiety and obsessions or sinking under the paralysing pressure of the past, their doubts over the future and returning to life in wider society. But it’s also about the thoughts of the care-givers, who listen, talk, try to knot together broken lines, forge professional relationships, give meaning and a direction towards something better, which isn’t always a walk in the park given the propensity many of the people who are hospitalised in the Averroès & Rosa Parks units have towards mental wanderings and the abyss-like depths of their fears and hang-ups. And, last but not least, there are the thoughts of the audience, who get a first-hand glimpse behind the scenes of psychiatry, a universe haunted by hyper-sensitive personalities trapped on the wrong side of a border which human beings generally believe (and/or fear) demarcates "normality".

It’s this "slightly terrifying" world, “like a prison” when seen from the outside, which the film reveals by way of fifteen or so individual consultations (or testimonials delivered directly to the camera) and several collective workshops, which take us deep beneath the surface. It’s an exceptional, present/invisible approach which helps the director to connect the audience as closely as possible with the patients’ viewpoints, with their unique space-time continuum, in all their full vulnerability and hyper-sensitive lucidity, which is often moving, sometimes funny (veering from Nietzsche to Mbappé, and from Socrates to Steve Jobs) and sometimes frightening (unveiling deep-seated and nightmare-esque paranoias). It lends an intense authenticity to the film, which is deftly interspersed with spaces in which to breathe, yet respectfully captures the different characters’ identities, whatever the degree of insanity they’re struggling with.

As it exposes the stark reality behind the paradox of having to “return to life from within a hospital”, the film also pays wonderful tribute to the staff and the extreme difficulty of their profession. But, reading between the lines, it also suggests just how much of what is said, what is confessed, what goes around and what overflows in psychiatric units is simply an extreme result of the outside world ("we’re suffocating, we’re at war with ourselves"). In his subtly restrained and gentle style, Nicolas Philibert sends a powerful message embedded within a very high-level documentary. As one patient randomly insists about a discussion: "it’s up to you to figure it out".

Averroès & Rosa Parks is produced by TS Productions and is sold internationally by Les Films du Losange.

(Translated from French)