On The Adamant

Name: On The Adamant
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2023
Duration: 109 min
Rating: 3.8

Nicolas Philibert20231h 49mDocumentary

Why we chose it

A barge really is moored in the middle of Paris with a psychiatric day centre on board, and Nicolas Philibert (“To Be and to Have”) won the Golden Bear for the film he shot there. He asks very little and mostly listens, which makes for a film so gentle that watching it feels like a kind of therapy.

Synopsis

Moored on the Seine in the very heart of Paris is a wooden barge, two storeys high, that serves as a public psychiatric day centre. Every morning adults living with mental illness come aboard to paint, run the café and argue about films. The team in charge believes in a way of working that modern psychiatry is increasingly abandoning.