On the Adamanta documentary by Frenchman Nicolas Philibert on a Parisian barge welcoming people with mental disorders, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday.
Two decades after the immense success of To be and to Havethe 72-year-old documentary filmmaker leaves school for this dive into the psychiatric universe, the first film of a trilogy on this subject.
Without voice-over, scrutinizing the faces of the patients welcomed every day in this unique structure where great freedom is left to them, On the Adamant is “an attempt to reverse the image we have of people suffering from madness”, explained Nicolas Philibert when receiving his prize.
“The craziest people are not the ones you think,” added the director of this long-term documentary, in which the border between caregivers and patients ends up blurring.
We can see patients participating in therapeutic or artistic workshops, but also forgetting their sick status to build a common life, helping for example to control the budget.
Rarely award-winning documentaries
Documentaries are regularly selected in major international film competitions, but rarely win awards. Last year, the Venice Film Festival awarded its Golden Lion to a film about the opiate crisis in the United States, by Laura Poitras (All the beauty and the bloodshed).
“This festival is there to push the limits,” justified American actress Kristen Stewart, who at 32 was the youngest president of the jury in the history of the festival. “The invisible parameters forged by industry and academism on what a film is don’t stand a chance with this one,” she added before presenting the award.
Another Frenchman, Philippe Garrel, 74, received the Silver Bear for best director for The Big Carta film that looks like an artistic testament shot with his children.
The jury, which also included former Golden Bear winners Radu Jude and Carla Simon, as well as French-Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, also awarded the performance of an 8-year-old girl, the Spaniard Sofia Otera, for her role in 20,000 species of abejas (20,000 species of bees).
The budding actress received, with tears in her eyes like a grown-up, the prize for best interpretation, which is non-gendered and replaces in Berlin that of best actor or best actress.
Transidentity
In the film, signed by the Spaniard Estíbaliz Urresola, she plays a nine-year-old child, born a boy and who considers himself a girl. The question of gender and transidentity, on which more and more filmmakers are looking, has been present on several occasions in the prize list.
The Austrian Thea Ehre, very active for transsexual rights, received the interpretation award for a secondary character for her role in Till The End of The Nightand the thinker Paul B. Preciado, a key figure on these issues, was rewarded in the parallel sections for his first film (Orlando, my political biography).
Beyond the competition, this 73e edition allowed the Berlinale to return to normality, after the restrictions linked to the COVID-19, and saw a number of stars return.
We were able to see Sean Penn, who came to present a documentary on his wanderings in Ukraine at war, the singer Bono and the legendary director Steven Spielberg, who received an honorary Golden Bear.
Friday evening, a Teddy Bear was awarded (rewarding the best film on an LGBT theme) to All the Colors of the World Are Between Black and Whitea love story by Nigerian Babatunde Apalowo.