On the Adamant, a documentary a couple of floating daycare middle in Paris for adults with psychological issues, has received the Berlin Movie Pageant’s Golden Bear award.
Accepting the Berlinale’s prime prize, director Nicolas Philibert mentioned he was deeply touched by the jury’s resolution to award it to a documentary relatively than a piece of fiction.
“That documentary might 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 middle aboard The Adamant, a barge moored on the suitable 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 atypical psychiatry.
“It’s as if we now not needed to see the ‘mad’,” he wrote.
“They’re now not mentioned besides by way of the prism of their harmful nature, which is most frequently fantasized.”
“On this extraordinarily devastated context, a spot like The Adamant appears a little bit miracle.”
The competition’s Silver Bear for greatest main actor went to Sofia Otero, who performs an eight-year-old transgender baby in 20,000 Species of Bees.
“It’s uncommon to see somebody convey so many feelings however stay easy and shattering,” jury president Kristen Stewart mentioned.
“Particularly in performances given to us by a toddler”.
