At Averroes & Rosa Parks

After winning the 2023 Berlinale Golden Bear (Best Film) for On the Adamant, French documentarian Nicolas Philibert returns to the festival with his follow-up, which literally follows on from his previous effort. Like On the Adamant, At Averroes & Rosa Parks deals with the treatment of mental illness. It doesn’t stake any grand claims to be representative of any particular mental illness, and the film (like most of the director’s efforts) attempts to say something about a big idea in a way that is quite small. This isn’t a criticism.

Philibert’s approach is almost humble, and most of the feature is nothing more than a patient (or patients) in conversation with their doctors and counsellors. Nobody is given a name by way of a title card, and only sparse context is provided – if it should come up in conversation. Philbert seems to respect his audience’s intelligence. This isn’t a series of case studies about specific mental illnesses, nor is it even directly about the two facilities where the documentary was filmed (which are Averroes and Rosa Parks). Quite why a mental health centre in Paris was named after an American civil rights activist isn’t mentioned.

Perhaps it isn’t immediately as accessible as Philbert’s work has been, and the rigid, fixed camera angles showing a patient chatting to a doctor can seem a little impersonal at first – like an inadvertently overheard conversation. The simple act of exposing the audience to these small moments slowly but surely creates insight and empathy. A main recurring theme in the documentary is the diminishing resources available to treat patients, both in a hospital ward and in the community.

Philibert is such a perceptive filmmaker, although it could be wondered if the patients might object at a later stage to having their illness immortalised on film. That being said, there’s no sense of pity directed towards its subjects. At Averroes & Rosa Parks is a film that creeps up on its audience in a way that’s unexpectedly gripping.

Oliver Johnston

At Averroes & Rosa Parks does not have a release date yet.

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