12 Days

By keeping the camera focused on the faces of patients and judges alike, Depardon — working again with sound recordist and producer Claudine Nougaret — reveals shreds of humanity, and even moments of hilarity, in these closed-door sessions.

It’s a quietly devastating film.

None of the interactions come across as a sham or an empty formality. Patients are treated with respect, at least in the hearings room.... There’s also genuine and inadvertent humor in the midst of sadness and administrative formalities.

[A] lucid, focused and adamant documentary.

At times unbearably intimate, even invasive, the photographer-documentarian Raymond Depardon’s 12 Days is the kind of film you might wonder, as you watch, whether you should be watching. I’m glad I did, and I can’t discount the empathy that this study of mental illness and bureaucratic practice stirs or the understanding it crystallizes.

With a tender and respectful gaze, 12 DAYS (@distribfilmsus) sheds light on the relationship between the French state and the mentally ill.