In an exclusive interview with PvNew after picking up the top industry prize at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel, Franco-Iranian director Mehran Tamadon outlined the intention of his upcoming feature documentary “The Last Days of the Hospital.”
Set against the backdrop of France’s public health crisis and shortage of personnel, the film will show patients from a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Paris taking charge of their own ward.
Tamadon has been running film workshops with the patients at the hospital for the past eight years, and decided it was time to make a film to denounce what he describes as “the ultra-liberal policy which plans the death of the public hospital.”
“French public hospitals are not doing well, nurses and caregivers are leaving because they are mistreated and poorly paid. That’s how I got the idea for this film: if there’s no one left, well, the patients can take over the ward,” he said.
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The film uses the same cinematographic devices as his previous works where he reverses the balance of power in order to shift reality.
In his debut feature “Bassidji,” Tamadon tried to forge a link with the militiamen of the Iranian regime, while affirming his identity as an Iranian atheist, an approach which he resumed in “Iranian,” before his 2023 diptych “Where God Is Not” and “My Worst Enemy,” where he gave voice to former Iranian political prisoners.
“What I try to do in my films is shift reality. Reality doesn’t convince me, I’m always wondering how we can change it through cinema. By showing that the patients can run the ward, you can imagine that another reality is possible,” Tamadon said.
“Changing reality is believing in others, believing that movement is possible, that a different society is possible, believing that psychiatry can be done differently, that patients can be less sedated.”
The film also relies on the therapeutic effects of seeing oneself on screen.
“The fact of filming oneself and then looking at the footage allows you to take a step back from yourself,” he said. “It forces you to think about yourself, and take responsibility for your relation to others in front of an audience, as I did when I filmed myself with the mullahs. It raises questions like: What am I capable of saying to others? How can I overcome my fear?”
The concept of the film is to present the patients with scenarios in which the staff is missing and they have to take charge of the ward. It will show the caregivers explaining to the patients in full detail how the ward functions, so that they can live there, take care of themselves and each other, and manage the wing until the nurses on sick leave come back.
“In this scenario, I propose to reverse the balance of power, to treat people in another way than giving them neuroleptic drugs which annihilate them. Many are inhibited and practically reduced to the state of an object.
“Over time, I invite them to become subjects and act. I film how they become comfortable in this role,” explains Tamadon in his director’s notes, adding that the doctors and nurses in the ward support the project, both for its therapeutic merits but also to highlight the crisis in France’s public hospitals.
“The Last Days of the Hospital” is a co-production between Elena Tatti of Swiss outfit Box Productions, who has worked with Tamadon on his previous films, and Paris-based TS Productions, which is behind Nicolas Philibert’s 2023 Golden Bear winner “On the Adamant,” about a day hospital on a boat for people living with mental illness.
TS Productions’ Delphine Morel hopes that picking up the new Eurimages Co-production Development Award at VdR, which comes with a cash prize of €20,000 ($22,000), will help secure further funding from France’s CNC.
Tamadon plans to start shooting in the fall with a release date expected late 2025 or early 2026.
Visions du Réel runs in Nyon until April 21.
