The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival will honour French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, “who dares to permeate the innermost depths of the human psyche,” and American director and photographer Lauren Greenfield, “who foregrounds the decay of the American nouveau-riche society,” during its 27th edition, running March 6-16.
Spotlight and Golden Alexander to Nicolas Philibert
The Golden Bear, César and European Film Academy winner Nicolas Philibert will be awarded the Festival’s honorary Golden Alexander for his overall contribution to cinema at the 27th TiDF. Nicolas Philibert will also deliver a masterclass, moderated by documentarist, producer and screenwriter Marco Gastine.
“In his movies, Philibert expresses a series of topical and fundamental social concerns, displaying loyalty, respect and sensibility towards the issue he touches upon,” the festival writes. “In his own words: ‘First and foremost, I am fascinated by the fragile character of the unpredictable, rather than the comfort of certainty. The unseen side is always the most intriguing.’”
A trilogy of Philibert’s films on alternative psychiatric approaches will be screened, along with an illuminating portrait of people working as nurse practitioners.
In Each and Every Moment (2018), the director follows the ups-and-downs of a training programme that brings thousands of students, both female and male, faced up against notions such as physical vulnerability, pain and diseases. On the Adamant (2023), which snatched the Golden Bear at the 2023 Berlinale Film Festival, casts a tender and enlightening glance at the warm and hospitable microcosmos of Adamant, a unique floating day care center of mental health, situated on river Seine, in the very heart of Paris.
In his two following documentaries, At Averroès & Rosa Parks (2024) and The Typewriter and Other Headaches (2024), Philibert delves even deeper into the issues unravelled in the documentary On the Adamant. Averroès and Rosa Parks are two psychiatric units located in Paris, which make part of the same network as Adamant. Making use of interviews and recording meetings between patients and caretakers, the director brings forth a psychiatric approach that makes room for what the patients themselves have to say. In The Typewriter and Other Headaches (2024), Philibert, alongside a group of volunteers, visit people suffering from mental illnesses in their homes, and take on the initiative to repair and fix their most precious objects and devices: a typewriter, a soundsystem, a printer.
Lauren Greenfield: Filming luxury and wealth
The work of the director and photographer Lauren Greenfield “castigates the toxic side of hyper-consumerism, leaving a biting commentary on the decay of the nouveau-riche class that wastes itself in ephemeral delights,” the festival writes. The 27th TiDF will host a tribute to the work of the American filmmaker, also welcoming her as a member of the International Competition jury.
“A multifarious and restless spirit, Greenfield has portrayed the distorted aspects of the modern-day and washed-up version of the American Dream,” the festival writes. “For over 30 years now, and ever since she read Brett Easton Ellis’ novel Less than Zero, plutocracy has been her main area of focus. The chase of beauty and its commercialization, the addiction to wealth accumulation, the dependence on money, the excess of overabundance, celebrity, power and the sweeping onset of consumerism are only a handful of the issues she explores in her multileveled work as a filmmaker and a photographer.”
Her most recent project, the documentary series Social Studies (2024), is described as “a ground-breaking social experiment exploring the effects of social media on the first generation of digital natives, today’s adolescents. By capturing real-time smartphone data and using it as both a sociological tool and a storytelling device, Social Studies examines how social media has fundamentally altered childhood.”
In The Kingmaker (2019), Greenfield centers her camera on Imelda Marcos, who gives unprecedented access to the filmmaker, allowing her “to record every inch of her daily life. The film examines the unanticipated return of the Marcos family in the power pyramid of the Philippines, as well as the disturbing legacy of the Marcos regime onto an entire nation.”
Witnessing the boom/bust cycles of a titan of finance, a pornstar, a bus driver, and a child beauty queen, Generation Wealth (2018) tracks down the cost of pursuing excessive wealth. “A portrait of a materialist and image-depended society, a groundbreaking document on the falsified American Dream. A revealing testimony on the pathogenies of capitalism, narcissism and greed.”
The tribute will also include her The Queen of Versailles (2012), her debut documentary Thin (2006), Magic City (2015) and Best Night Ever (2012) and others.
