Paris mental illness documentary wins top Berlin film prize

BERLIN, Feb 25 (Reuters) – “On the Adamant”, a documentary a couple of floating daycare centre in Paris for adults with psychological sickness, clinched the Berlin Movie Pageant’s Golden Bear award on Saturday.

Its director Nicolas Philibert mentioned he was deeply touched by the jury’s choice to award the Berlinale’s prime prize to a documentary moderately than a piece of fiction.

“That documentary could be thought-about cinema in its personal proper touches me deeply,” he mentioned. “For 40 years I’ve all the time fought for it to be seen as a lot.”

Shot over three years, the movie follows life at a daycare centre aboard The Adamant, a barge moored on the best financial institution of the Seine, the place sufferers and carers work together in ways in which break with what Philibert sees because the dehumanisation of psychiatry.

“Sufferers in psychiatry are all the time stigmatised … and all the time thought-about via the prism of violence and I wished to reverse the cliche and present how human they’re,” he mentioned on the purple carpet after his movie received.

“I hope it’s going to assist to awake the consciousness of society.”

The competition’s Silver Bear for finest main actor went to Sofia Otero, who performs an eight-year-old transgender little one in “20,000 Species of Bees”.

“It’s uncommon to see somebody convey so many feelings however stay easy and shattering,” mentioned jury president Kristen Stewart. “Particularly in performances given to us by a toddler.”

Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Writing by Miranda Murray; Enhancing by Alexander Smith

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