It's an eventful release! Alongside the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Mostra, the Berlinale is one of the three most important film festivals in the world. And as in Venice with Toute la Beauté et le Sang versé, it's a documentary that has won the Golden Bear at Berlin, and a French one at that! Sur L'Adamant, by Nicolas Philibert, is due in cinemas on April 19, 2023.
L'Adamant is a boat that can be found on the banks of the Seine, in Paris. In this rather special building, volunteers welcome adults suffering from psychological disorders every day, offering them a care setting that helps them reconnect with the outside world. In fact, filmmaker Nicolas Philibert spends almost two hours filming people whose lives have been ravaged, whose histories are often sordid, and whose suffering is manifold. Yet the film is never miserabilistic or condescending.
On the contrary, he films the day-to-day life of this floating building, with touching, hopeful moments. Neither the film nor the filmmaker puts into words the illnesses suffered by those filmed, but fortunately that's not the point. Above all, we are impressed by the power of the testimonies. It's easy to understand why Nicolas Philibert chose to place his cameras on this boat: the Adamant's occupants are veritable film characters.
"There are actors here who don't know they're actors," says one of them in front of the camera, and that's exactly the impression that emerges at the end of the feature. L'Adamant is a center attached to a psychiatric site, one of the last of its kind. With this film, Nicolas Philibert wants to show that this type of facility must be preserved at all costs.
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