12 Days
World Mental Health Day • 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 World Mental Health Day
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Liberation: The User's Guide
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SPK Complex
Directed by Gerd Kroske • Documentary • 2018 • 111 minutes
In 1970, Dr. Wolfgang Huber and a group of patients founded the anti-psychiatric "Socialist Patient's Collective" in Heidelberg. Controversial therapy methods, political demands, and a massive interest in the movement from patients deepl...
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Dream Deceivers
Directed by David Van Taylor • Documentary • With James Vance, Ray Belknap, Phyllis Vance, Rob Halford, K.K. Downing, Ian Hill, Glenm Tipton, Scott Travis • 1991 • 58 minutes
Two young men shoot themselves in a churchyard. Ray Belknap dies; James Vance - severely disfigured - survives. Their par...
