Berlinale 2024: Averroès & Rosa Parks (Berlinale Special) | Review
Last year’s Golden Bear winner, French documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert was eagerly awaited with this new opus, a sort of sequel to the previous one, without being entirely a sequel. An empathetic portrait of the French psychiatric system.
I’m suffering, can you hear it? Documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert returns to Berlin this year after winning last year’s Golden Bear for On the Adamant. He offers us a sequel, Averroès & Rosa Parks, which should ultimately constitute a trilogy. On the Adamant introduced us to the unusual daily life of a psychiatric day center located on a barge in Paris, offering a variety of artistic workshops for patients. Here, in Averroès & Rosa Parks, we return to the hospital with some of the characters we met in the previous film.
What can psychiatry do? This is the central question that emerges in different forms from patients and caregivers alike. For patients, it’s a reflection of their place in the here and now, but also of their goal: many wonder whether so much effort, medication, and meetings with psychiatrists are really worth it. On the caregivers’ side, there’s the need to convince them that, yes, a well-followed course of treatment can help you “stabilize” and get back on the road to a “normal” life – what is normal, anyway? – to emerge – in part – from (complete) dependence.
In terms of form, Nicolas Philibert seems even more inspired than in On the Adamant. The sequences, often long, follow one another with delicacy and fluidity. It’s not just a succession of “moments” captured with his camera. They are bricks that build a solid edifice. It’s an introspection of the French healthcare system. Patients and caregivers alike recognize its limitations – shortage of staff, lack of beds, etc. – while at the same time feeling fortunate. Because, in the end, what remains for all of us humans is the other, empathy. And that’s what this film sublimates.
