Documentaries are the new trend in film festivals On the Adamant Golden Bear Winner

By M. R. D’Amico

Director, director of photography, editor: Nicholas Philibert
Producers: Miléna Poylo, Gilles Sacuto, Céline Loiseau
Sales: Les Films du Losange
In French
1 hour 49 minutes

Synopsis:  Watching this touching documentary by Nicholas Philibert, who at 72, won by surprise the Golden Bear at the 73. Berlinale fills us with hope about the future of cinema. Adamant tells the creative routines that happen every day on the Paris mental health day care unique facility, set on a floating structure on the Seine, in the Centre of Paris. A very courageous team of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers are convinced that a human approach to mental illness is one of the keys to contrast the deterioration that we have to face every day in our society.

It was the only documentary in Competition at Berlinale this year and the fact that it won confirms a new trend in the film industry, mainly that nonfiction cinema is the new deal. It started last September at the Biennale in Venice when the jury, captained by the actress Julianne Moore, decided to give the Golden Lion to All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, by Laura Poitras, a stunning documentary about the traumatic life of photographer, artist, and activist Nan Goldin. In Berlin, Kristen Stewart managed to defy all expectations again: “People have gone in circles for thousands of years trying to pin down what can be deemed art, who’s allowed to do it and what determines its value,” Stewart said, citing the boundary-pushing nature of the festival. “For all of us, you just know it when you see it.” And director Nicholas Philibert added smiling: “That a documentary is awarded and celebrated and that a documentary can be considered to be cinema in its own right touches me deeply”. In this film Philibert and his team tried to reverse the image that people have about mental illness but what they managed to do was much more. When you watch Adamant, you realize that there are no distinctions between patients and professionals but at the same time you become involved in what’s happening on that boat and this can happen mainly because the camera is used as a silent witness that shows us all that “the craziest people are not those we think they are”, and that we are also part of the story… After watching Adamant you just want to know everything about Philibert’s work and realize that his previous documentaries are real masterpieces too: Etre et avoir (2002), and Les pays des sourds (1992) for example.