There, before you: caring for the uncared for

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since 2005, a growing number of French documentary filmmakers have taken their cameras inside institutions of care: hospitals, psychiatric wards, private doctors’ offices, nursing homes and even prisons. This article focuses on two films – Prendre soin/Caring (Bertrand Hagenmüller, 2018) and Être là/Being There (Régis Sauder, 2012) – that bring the viewer inside nursing homes and a psychiatric care unit located at the heart of a violent penitentiary – to contend that filmmakers have redefined (health)care as a political and ethical field so as to interrogate our collective (in)ability to care for all members of our society with compassion and attention. It proposes that Prendre soin and Être là actively engage with care as a set of practices, attitudes and interactions that continually need to be reaffirmed against misconceptions, managerial demands and institutional violence. As they do so, they position documentary cinema as a space where the value of care can be grasped more intimately. Furthermore, both films dislodge the viewer from the safe position documentary spectators expect to maintain by leading them to face alterity (social, psychological, physical) as a shared human condition.