87 minutes / Color
French / English subtitles
Release: 2018
Copyright: 2017
12 DAYS is included in the same DVD box set with JOURNAL DE FRANCE and FRANCE (LES HABITANTS).
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.
Encompassing questions of mental health, power, class, agency, and the dynamics of societal institutions, 12 DAYS is consummately controlled yet suffused with empathy and compassion.
"If you are unfamiliar with the work of French photographer, photojournalist, and filmmaker Raymond Depardon, this three-disk boxed set from Icarus Films provides a basis for understanding who he is and what subject matters occupies his field of vision." —Documentary Magazine
"Rarely has a filmmaker been able to document madness in such a direct way." —The Hollywood Reporter
"Remarkable! Quietly devastating." —The Guardian
"Quietly powerful." —RogerEbert.com
"A proudly humane film." —Sight & Sound
"12 Days shows powerfully the labor of dispassion, how the male and female judges, some younger and some older, struggle to articulate the wretchedness of the lives before them" —4Columns
"Highly recommended! Offers a poignant portrayal of psychologically damaged people and one society's efforts to provide humane treatment." —Video Librarian
Select Accolades
Documentarist Raymond Depardon travels through provincial France in a camper, gathering conversations with people from all walks of life.
Raymond Depardon | 2018 | 84 minutes | Color | French | English subtitles
A journal, a voyage through time. He photographs France, she rediscovers the unseen footage he has so carefully kept: his first steps behind the camera, his TV reports from around the world, snatches of their memories and of our history.
Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret | 2018 | 100 minutes | Color | French | English subtitles
Yulia and Katia are inmates held in a Siberian mental facility against their wishes.
Alexander Kuznetsov | 2016 | 80 minutes | Color | Russian | English subtitles
The daily lives and isolation of a group of men locked on one floor of a Chinese city's psychiatric institution.
Wang Bing | 2016 | 238 minutes | Color | English; Mandarin | English subtitles
