On the Edge review – gripping study of France’s overstretched mental health system

Paris: Within the corridors of a psychiatric ward in Beaujon hospital in Clichy, Paris, tensions run high. Every day, a steady stream of patients pours in, while resources are stretched pitifully thin. Through jagged handheld cinematography, Nicolas Peduzzi’s gripping and passionate documentary reflects the facility’s breakneck pace. Amid a flurry of frantic calls and rolling stretchers, a calm presence emerges: here comes Dr Jamal Abdel-Kader, the only staff psychiatrist in the building.

The camera trails after Abdel-Kader’s hurried steps as he splits his day between various departments, from the emergency rooms to the intensive care units. Despite his colossal workload – a result of crumbling infrastructure and lack of government budget – he devotes his full attention to each individual patient. Some are only in their late teens when they attempt self-harm and even suicide. Others have already spent a lifetime trapped in a cycle of addiction and depression.

Although their situations vary, the patients’ circumstances all point to structural issues in France’s treatment of mental health. Abdel-Kader perceives the private struggles of his patients not simply as personal failings, but as symptoms of an indifferent society, in which people have forgotten how to care for one another. Besides medical intervention, his treatment also includes other forms of therapy, including creative sessions where people gather to study Molière and Shakespeare.

Abdel-Kader’s conversations with colleagues reveal that the loneliness endured by the patients also extends to the overworked physicians, who are undersupported by the state. These moments of introspection at the hospital, expressed in black-and-white snapshots, lend a human touch to spaces that are still painfully stigmatised in the public eye. In contrast to the outside world driven by productivity and prejudice, here is where care and understanding still exist, against all odds.