2nd Festival Docu-MENTAL

The second film festival dedicated to people with mental issues is to be held as part of Congress on Mental Health: Meeting the Needs of the XXI Century.

Michel Foucault said that madness and madmen are "menace and mockery, the dizzying unreason of the world, and the feeble ridicule of men." Throughout history, they have been shunned, isolated, ignored, and overlooked. And yet madness fascinates people, it attracts their attention and hypnotises them – especially the artistic madness that juxtaposes the insane genius against the common people.

But the Docu-MENTAL festival is neither about fear nor exaggerated wonder. The authors of documentary and fiction films featured in this festival's programme reach out to the madness and madmen to help them off their tragic pedestal and put them next to rest of us who keep both feet firmly on the ground. To let us look each other in the eyes from up close. There is no fake they-are-no-different-from-the-rest-of-us kind of sentiment, for they are different in some way or another, and it is often through those differences that human emotions and the human essence are exposed so much clearer than they usually are in the "normal" people. 

Just like a trip abroad can confirm national stereotypes but is more likely to shatter them, the journey through the festival's delicate and deeply personal films forces us to reconsider the notions of "norm" and "deviation" in the modern society.