15/18

Minds, moods, bodies and voices jostle for space in 15/18. Cédric Kahn turns a psychiatric ward for minors into a stage that crackles with the energy of adolescence. Many of the young actors are first-timers, and their performances are of a striking authenticity: spontaneous, unruly, utterly lived. Kahn, who also plays the head psychiatrist, directs them with precision, turning cramped corridors and communal rooms into the settings for a choreography in which separate bodies fuse into a single, many-headed, multi-voiced organism. The camera is always attuned to their collective rhythm, even when individual suffering breaks through. Yet beneath the jokes, laughter and bursts of joy lies a deep-seated pain, shaped by experiences that are so often treated as taboo: sexuality, abuse, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. The ward brings together teenagers from different social backgrounds, the care staff and visiting families, creating a shifting web of tensions, support and expectations. Then arrives a boy with no psychiatric history, unexpectedly disrupting this fragile equilibrium. In its final movement, Kahn lets realism give way to the imaginary, opening a hopeful crack onto another possible world. (Maria Giovanna Vagenas)

Cédric Kahn: BAR DES RAILS (1991), TROP DE BONHEUR (1994), CULPABILITÉ ZÉRO (1996), L’ENNUI (1998), ROBERTO SUCCO (2001), FEUX ROUGES (2004), L’AVION (2005), LES REGRETS (2009), UNE VIE MEILLEURE (2011), VIE SAUVAGE (2014), LA PRIÈRE (2018), FÊTE DE FAMILLE (2019), LE PROCÈS GOLDMAN (2023), MAKING OF (2024)