12 Days
Icarus Films • 1h 26m
Directed by Raymond Depardon • Documentary • 2017 • 87 minutes
Every year in France, 92,000 people are placed under psychiatric care without their consent. 12 DAYS focuses on those who have been involuntarily remanded to a mental hospital, and more specifically documents the hearings that, according to a 2013 law, are required to take place 12 days after each patient has been committed.
At these hearings, the patients are given an opportunity to argue for their freedom before a judge who ultimately decides whether they will go free or return for further treatment. Granted access to these hearings for the first time, celebrated filmmaker and photographer, Raymond Depardon, captures these extraordinary encounters between justice and psychiatry, giving a voice to those who have previously been voiceless.
"Remarkable! Quietly devastating." —The Guardian
"A proudly humane film." —Sight & Sound
Up Next in Icarus Films
-
30 Second Democracy
Directed by David Vainola • Documentary • 1996 • 51 minutes
:30 Second Democracy explores the disturbing relationship between political parties and the advertising industry during election campaigns. Through television advertising, techniques perfected to sell commercial products are readily app...
-
900 Days
Directed by Jessica Gorter • Documentary • 2011 • 77 minutes
Jessica Gorter's 900 DAYS contrasts the devastating and unforgettable stories recounted by survivors of the Siege of Leningrad, the infamous German blockade, which caused the deaths of more than 1 million people during World War II, wi...
-
A Baptism of Fire
Directed by Jerome Clement-Wilz • Documentary • 2015 • 52 minutes
'As it gets harder to sell pictures, we take greater and greater risks,' explains Corentin Fohlen. A war correspondent still in his twenties, Fohlen is part of a new generation of freelance journalists who fly to war zones from Li...
