The documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, Special Award Brain Film Fest 2025

Author of a transformative trilogy on mental health, he will receive the award on 12th March, at the opening night of the festival dedicated to the brain.

Nicolas Philibert, master of documentary filmmaking, will receive the Special Award at the Brain Film Fest 2025 on 12th March in Barcelona, during the opening night of the 8th edition of the festival. Driven by the Pasqual Maragall Foundation and co-organised by Minimal Films, this event dedicated to exploring and promoting knowledge about the brain will take place from 12th to 16th March at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). This year’s award honours a documentary filmography that is innovative and engaged with the complexity of the human condition, specifically his recent trilogy on psychiatric centres in Paris—a powerful tool for destigmatising mental illness and presenting a new approach to care.

“His gaze illuminates with respect,” explain the festival directors, Cristina Maragall, president of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation, and filmmaker Albert Solé. “With this approach, he has completed an innovative trilogy on mental illness, a series that began in 2023 with On the Adamant, continued in early 2024 with Averroès & Rosa Parks, and recently concluded with the film that will open Brain Film Fest 2025, The Typewriter and Other Sources of Disturbance.” In addition to receiving the honorary award, Philibert will participate in discussions with the audience after the screening of these three films at the festival.

The award, created in 2022, is given annually to a person from the cultural world whose work has had a significant impact on the collective imagination regarding the themes of the brain. In 2023, the award was given to filmmaker Isabel Coixet, in 2022 to actress Carme Elias, and in the previous edition to Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi.

Nicolas Philibert’s Observational Cinema

After studying philosophy, Nicolas Philibert (Nancy, 1951) turned to filmmaking, working as an assistant director before making his debut in 1978 with La voix de son maître (The Voice of His Master). His later works include Un animal, des animaux (1994), La moindre des choses (1996), and Être et avoir (2001), a documentary that premiered at Cannes, which explored the bond between a rural teacher and his students and became a benchmark for empathy and pedagogy, earning international acclaim. Retour en Normandie (2006), Nénette (2010), and La Maison de la Radio (2013) further cemented his reputation as one of Europe’s great documentary filmmakers.

On the Adamant (Sur l’Adamant, 2023) was filmed at an unconventional day centre in Paris, located on a floating structure on the Seine. The film, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, depicts a psychiatric care model based on respect and collaboration between patients and caregivers, marking the start of his trilogy on mental health. Since then, he has completed his trilogy with Averroès & Rosa Parks (2024), in which he gives voice to the mentally ill and their caregivers within a fragile but resilient healthcare system, and finally with The Typewriter and Other Sources of Disturbance (La Machine à écrire et autres sources de tracas), a portrayal of a home care brigade assisting patients with everyday issues, such as fixing a typewriter or an appliance.

Since 2002, over a hundred tributes and retrospectives of his films have been held worldwide, from London (BFI) to New York (MoMA), Bombay, Calcutta, Damascus, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney, Melbourne, Moscow, Warsaw, Zagreb, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Vilnius, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Thessaloniki, Tel Aviv, Mexico City, Bogotá, Santiago, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Chicago, Berkeley, Harvard, and Montreal.