Averroès & Rosa Parks

French documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, best known for the touching 2002 Être et avoir, made a big impression in 2023 with Sur l'Adamant, an honest and warm portrait of the patients and staff of the Adamant psychiatric institution. The film earned him the Golden Bear at the Berlinale the same year. In Averroès & Rosa Parks, he once again turns his camera on the people in a psychiatric institution, mostly the same people as in his previous film. As such, it is the second part of a triptych about these people.

Averroès and Rosa Parks are two wards of the Esquirol Hospital, a psychiatric institution in Paris. We see people with mental health problems coming in and how they are taken care of by the hospital staff. With care and attention, these staff are ready to help the patients, but it is often not easy. And that has everything to do with the failing healthcare system and the resulting staff shortage. Philibert portrays it soberly, but with great empathy.