His documentary “On the Adamant”, which follows people with psychiatric disorders aboard a barge, was crowned best film at the Berlinale 2023.
“It’s magnificent, it’s an honor, a joy and a pride”confided on Sunday February 26 on franceinfo, the documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, director of On the Adamant, who received the Golden Bear at the Berlinale on Saturday. The Frenchman evokes a “form of consecration” with this price.
This documentary takes the viewer on board the barge “L’Adamant” which welcomes people suffering from psychiatric disorders in Paris. “It’s wonderful for me, for documentaries and for psychiatry”adds the director, who specifies that this film is the first of a triptych.
franceinfo: How did you feel when you announced this award?
Nicholas Philibert: It’s magnificent, it’s an honor, it’s a joy and a source of pride. It’s a lot of emotion. The Berlinale is one of the three big festivals, so it’s a form of consecration for me. It was a pleasure to see a documentary in the selection already, it’s not easy, I was the only one facing 17 or 18 fictions. So it’s wonderful for me, for documentaries but also for psychiatry, which is fragile today.
“Basically, psychiatry tells us about our flaws, our limits, our fears, our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities.”
Nicholas Philibertat franceinfo
Your film bears the name of a barge that accommodates people with psychiatric disorders. How did this topic come to you?
I have been very attached to psychiatry for a long time. I made a film 27 years ago at the La Borde psychiatric clinic, and it’s something that hasn’t stopped worrying me ever since. I think it’s a magnifying glass on our world, and for a filmmaker, it’s inexhaustible. We can feel a little different from the patients and at the same time very close.
How does the filming of such a documentary prepare and take place? Can’t really write it?
I often say of my films that it is a matter of programming chance. Indeed, I do not know in advance what will happen in front of the camera. My job is not to write the scenes in advance, but to facilitate things so that something can happen between those I came to film and me. It’s about sowing little seeds so that things can grow in front of the camera, with the risk that they won’t grow. It is a question of encouraging encounter, of making the encounter between them and us possible. So it goes through the spoken word, it doesn’t go so much through the written word. It is of course necessary to write a small file to convince producers, but beyond that, everything passes by the words, the meetings. I explain a bit what I’m doing there, I don’t arrive in an overhanging way, determined to do this or do that.
Do you have to succeed in disappearing?
No, you don’t have to disappear. It’s about being there, in a discreet but present way. I’m in an assertive presence to film, it’s not a question of a camera that would come and film in secret, without people knowing, it’s quite the opposite. I am there, I am close, I am with each other, and I collect what people want to give me. I don’t force doors, I don’t insist, but I try to create a climate of trust. There are a lot of moments on set where the camera is in a corner, and then from time to time I go and get it because someone suddenly tells me something. I capture moments on the go, but also sometimes when someone comes to talk to me and I tell them “Wait, I’m going to get the camera, you’re going to tell me about it, I’m interested!”
You say it’s a trilogy. Is the sequel being filmed?
It’s the first part of a triptych, not a trilogy. The other two films will not be sequels. They will be two different films. We will be able to see the following ones without having to have seen the first one, it is important to say it. The three films will be independent, but we will nevertheless find some protagonists.