On the Adamant

Sur l'Adamant

The film that earned the emblematic French documentarist the Golden Bear at the 2023 Berlinale is an unassuming yet profoundly moving documentary on the healing nature of art, one that treats its fragile characters like the cast of a thrilling piece of fiction. Named after the popular lead singer of the British band Adam and the Ants (!), Adamant is a unique daycare center: a floating structure on the Seine in the heart of Paris. It welcomes adults with mental disorders, offering them care that grounds them in time and space, and helps them to recover or keep up their spirits. The team running the center strives to resist the deterioration and dehumanization of psychiatry as best they can. The film invites us aboard to meet the patients and caregivers who invent its daily life. As this universe unfolds, the often irrational narratives are no longer manifested as figments of some wild imagination but instead revealed as fragments of an alternate world brimming with passion and creativity. “[A] portrait of community, where people from vastly different backgrounds and ages are brought together, to share stories, to contribute to administrative meetings, to work collectively on projects and, yes, even to plan a film festival. As the world seems more and more consumed with moral panic when it comes to mental illnesses, this documentary looks deeper into the lives of those directly affected, unveiling the nuances of human interaction and exposing humanity in unexpected places” (Michelle Carey).
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.
Direction: Nicolas Philibert
Cinematography: Nicolas Philibert
Editing: Nicolas Philibert
Sound: Érik Ménard, François Abdelnour
Production: TS Productions, France 3 Cinéma
Producers: Miléna Poylo, Gilles Sacuto, Céline Loiseau
Co-production: Longride
Co-producers: Norio Hatano
Format: DCP
Color: Color
Production Country: France, Japan
Production Year: 2023
Duration: 109'
Distribution in Greece: Cinobo
Contact: Les Films Du Losange
Awards/Distinctions: Golden Bear – Berlin IFF 2023, Golden Star – El Gouna FF 2023, Best Documentary – Silk Road IFF China 2023, Prix de la Thématique – Bastia Mediterranean FF 2024
The film was made with the complicity of Linda De Zitter.
Local Distributor: Cinobo

Nicolas Philibert

Internationally recognized director, Nicolas Philibert was born in Nancy (France) in 1951, grew up in Grenoble and has lived in Paris since the age of 20. After studying philosophy, he turned to cinema, making his first steps as an assistant director on fiction films, and soon began directing feature-length documentaries which were all theatrically released: Louvre City (1990), In the Land of the Deaf (1993), Animals (1995) or Every Little Thing (1997), which constitutes for him his first experience of filming in psychiatry. In 2002, his film To Be and To Have, which retraces the daily life of a “single-class” school in a small mountain village, presented in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival, achieved immense success in France and in forty countries. It was followed by Back to Normandy (2007), Nénette (2010), La Maison de la radio (2013), and Each and Every Moment (2018) which immerses us in a nursing training institute. Filmed in the heart of the Paris central psychiatric system, his last three films – On the Adamant (Golden Bear at the Berlinale 2023), At Averroes & Rosa Parks (2024) and The Typewriter and Other Headaches (2024) - constitute a triptych in which he strives to rehabilitate the words of patients and to film places which attempt to resist the decay and dehumanization which strike psychiatry. Film after film Nicolas Philibert builds a body of work off the beaten track which combines poetry, humor, commitment, and which gives pride of place to imagination and encounters. The more we delve into his films, the more we see what unites the filmmaker and his protagonists, something like the search for a common humanity beyond the differences that separate them. The acuity of his listening makes him one of the great filmmakers of the human condition.

Filmography

1978 His Master’s Voice (co-direction)
1985 Christophe (short)
1987 Trilogy for One Man
1990 Louvre City
1992 In the Land of the Deaf
1995 Animals and More Animals
1997 Every Little Thing
1999 Who Knows?
2002 To Be and To Have
2007 Back to Normandy
2010 Nénette
2013 La Maison de la radio
2018 Each and Every Moment
2022 On the Adamant
2024 At Averroes & Rosa Parks
2024 The Typewriter and Other Headaches