A Place to Heal

French director Cédric Kahn is best known for thrillers like Roberto Succo or courtroom drama The Goldman Case. This year he competes for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival with teen drama A Place to Heal (15/18). Its original title 15/18 refers to the age bracket of the psychiatric ward the feature is set in: the patients are between 15 and 18 years old.

The adolescents at the facility couldn’t be more different from one another, but what they all have in common is that each displayed self-harming behaviour; in extreme cases, attempted suicide.

In spite – or because – of their dire circumstances, they are a rambunctious crowd who treat the daily activities designed to help them as little more than amusement.

Kahn’s realist approach lends the piece almost a documentary-like quality, with certain scenes carrying an unpolished immediacy. This is also reflected in the performances, which can feel awkward and hesitant, resisting the polish of conventional acting. The naturalism works particularly well for the children, but the flat delivery in some of the parents’ scenes diminishes any potential emotional impact.

As honest and true-to-life as the film evidently strives to be, it is not entirely free of the familiar theatrical flourishes one has come to expect from displays of mental health struggles. As a sign of their frustration and distress, the teenagers punch walls and throw furniture.

On occasion, the characters’ dialogues treat deeply traumatic experiences with the offhand casualness that American comedies often exploit for comic effect. When one of the girls explains that her roommate bangs her head against the wall at night, because the darkness reminds her of the abuse she had to endure, the viewer almost expects this blunt disclosure to be a punchline to a joke.

Some characters appear more fully realised than others, leaving the overall dynamic a bit lopsided. However, A Place to Heal finds a more assured drive in its later exploration of a love triangle between patients, taking an unexpected narrative turn as it considers what freedom really means. One of the three is played by Malou Khebizi, whose breakout performance in Wild Diamond was so sharply targeted that one might have feared she would have trouble shaking the image. The girl’s deep-seated need to be loved traps her in a destructive cycle of offering sex, with the absence of genuine affection only deepening her insecurity. Her complexity is one of the movie’s strongest elements.

While A Place to Heal is most invested in authenticity and this commitment is unevenly successful, at its best, the feature finds images that speak more powerfully than its dialogue ever could.

Selina Sondermann

Read more reviews from our Venice Film Festival 2026 coverage here.

For further information about the event, visit the Venice Film Festival website here.