Jamal Abdel Kader is the only psychiatrist in a 400-bed state hospital on the outskirts of Paris. Dedicated to his patients, he does his utmost to soothe their pain, to listen to their words, to protect them from their own demons. However, the public health service is doing badly. There isn’t enough time, the caregivers are under severe strain as the institution is understaffed and underfunded. Yet Jamal and his colleagues keep striving to fulfill their mission: to heal bodies and souls.
SCREENINGS & AWARDS
World Premiere: CPH:DOX Main Competition 2023
2023 ACID Cannes
2023 Champs-Élysées Film Festival
2023 Festival La Rochelle Cinéma
2023 Dokufest
2023 Zurich Film Festival (Swiss Premiere)
2023 Pravo Ljudski Film Festival
2023 Doclisboa (Portuguese Premiere)
2023 Stockholm International Film Festival (Swedish Premiere)
2023 FICFA – Festival International du cinema Francophone en Acadie (Canadian Premiere)
2023 Auteur Film Festival Belgrade (Serbian Premiere)
2023 Watch Docs Film Festival (Polish Premiere)
2024 Ramdam Film Festival (Belgian Premiere)
2024 Antenna Documentary Film Festival (Australian Premiere)
2024 PSY images FF
2024 Festival de Cine y Derechos Humanos – Donostia-San Sebastián (Spanish Premiere)
2024 Crossing Europe (Austrian Premiere)
2024 Mostra Ecofalante de Cinema
Upcoming: Quebec City Film Festival (Sept 11-15), Maison Française at Columbia University (Sept 19), Job Film Days FF (Oct 1-6), Inconvenient Films Festival (Oct 8-27)
AWARDS
- Special Mention in DOX:AWARD Competition at CPH:DOX 2023
“We would like to give our special mention to the film that gripped us, and took us on a journey through the labyrinth of a human mind. The jury’s special mention goes to ‘On the Edge’ by Nicolas Peduzzi.”
- Grand Prix for Best French Independent Feature Film at Champs-Élysées Film Festival 2023
- Critics Award for Best French Feature Film at Champs-Élysées Film Festival 2023
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PRESS
Reviews: j:mag, Pełna Sala, Business Doc Europe, The Film Verdict, International Cinephile Society, Little White Lies, Screen Daily, IDA Documentary Magazine, Unseen Films, Le Polyester, Variety, Cineuropa, Politiken.dk
Interviews: The Peoples’ Movies
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“An exemplary young doctor in a state-run Parisian psych ward epitomizes the injustice of a health system that pressures staff to personally compensate for its own structural failures.”
Jessica Kiang, Variety
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“Nicolas Peduzzi returns with an intense documentary set in a Clichy hospital where a young psychiatrist takes care of complicated cases with rare patience and understanding”
Vladan Petkovic, Cineuropa
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“Faced with this cynicism and in such a slump, On The Edge seeks and successfully finds what remains of humanity, and of the bond between humans.”
Nicolas Bardot, Le Polyester
DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY
Nicolas Peduzzi
Nicolas Peduzzi is a French actor and director born in 1985 in Paris. After several appearances in films as an actor, namely Les Fausses Confidences by Luc Bondy, Nicolas Peduzzi directed a feature documentary, Southern Belle, released in France in 2018. The film was awarded the Grand Prix at the FID Marseille and was part of the Best of doc selection of the “Documentary month” 2019. He then directed Ghost Song, selected at the ACID 2021, released in France in 2022 and purchased in the US by Vice. On the Edge is his third feature documentary.
Filmography (selection)
Ghost Song (2021)
Southern Belle (2018)
CREDITS
Directed by Nicolas Peduzzi
Image Nicolas Peduzzi, Laëtitia Montalembert
Editing Nicolas Sburlati
Original music Gaël Rakotondrabe
Photographs Penelope Chauvelot
Assistant director Hortense Maunoury
Sound recording Alexandre Bracq, Benoît Déchaut
Sound assistant Chiara Livia
Sound editing Louis Blanc
Producer Carine Ruszniewski
Production company GoGoGo Films
In association with ARTE France
With the support of the Région Île-de-France and the Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine (Nouvelle-Aquitaine Film Workout)
With the participation of Tënk and Mediapart
In association with Cinéventure
PRODUCER’S BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY
Carine Ruszniewski
A graduate of the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs, trained at Agat Films, Carine Ruszniewski produced around twenty films within her first company, De Films en Aiguille, including Free Angela and all political prisoners by Shola Lynch. Carine then founded GoGoGo Films in 2018 where she first produced creative documentaries (Ghost Song and Etat Limite by Nicolas Peduzzi; Soul Kids by Hugo Sobelman and Golda Maria by Hugo and Patrick Sobelman) and short films. More recently, she has started to produce her first feature films. Bérenger Thouin’s L’Âge d’or will be shot in the autumn of 2023; others are in development: the first feature films by Vincent Elbaz, Caroline Brami and Frédéric Bas, whose shorts Carine had produced, and Samuel Suffren. Carine is concerned about the evolution of the French film landscape and is an active member of the SPI, where she defends the interests of an independent cinema that is in tune with the times and concerned with the dialogue between genres and formats.
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Since its launch in 2018, GoGoGo Films has been producing for the small and the big screen, short and feature-length films, documentaries and fiction. We are united by one conviction: genres have a lot to teach each other. It’s all about thresholds. Ours is located at the crossroads of Paris and Marseille, Beirut and Houston, Tunis and Memphis, open to all the undermined or unknown territories.
GoGoGo Films
Paris, France
contact@gogogofilms.fr
+ 33 9 85 11 08 40
https://www.gogogo-films.com
CO-PRODUCTION COMPANY
ARTE France
Strasbourg
France
https://www.arte.tv/fr/
