Raymond Depardon shot Urgences in the emergency room of the Hôtel Dieu in Paris, capturing admission interviews, psychiatric sessions and dramas of people in acute mental distress. This is a harrowing yet tender portrait of people who cannot or can hardly hold out in the cold, anonymous big city. Urgences is one of the films that Depardon devoted to important institutions: the police, the court, psychiatric institutes, politics and the media.
“Urgences deals with a world I don't know very well, but the subject had been in my head for quite some time: I wanted to make a film about something that surfaces during psychoanalysis, in a debate, between someone who listens and someone who talks - something involving trust. Therefore, I did not [as in the case of San Clemente, for example] make a photo report in advance, because I wanted to maintain a pristine view.” (Raymond Depardon)
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