Jérôme le Maire: Burning Out

The film tonight at the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade deals with a topic that touches all of us, who one way or the other have tried to be exhausted to a degree that you can call it a ”burn-out” Svetlana and Zoran Popovic have written this text about the film, taken from the festival’s catalogue/website:

Great documentary undertaking! Jérôme le Maire is an author who enters with camera the places that are completely inaccessible and forbidden, and he records there the traditional battles, but also discovers for us completely modern, unexpected and astonishing ones. With discreet presence and careful observation the author develops a fascinating study of the contemporary world in which disappear havens for the weak and sick, in which disappear empathy, caring and the power of healing.

“BURNING OUT” is literally a drama of life and death. For two years, the Belgian director Jérôme le Maire followed the members of a surgical unit in one of the biggest hospitals in Paris. Constantly exposed to severe stress, with a lack of staff and with strict budget cuts, employees are fighting among themselves for resources, while the management imposes increasingly stringent criteria of efficiency and profitability. All over Europe ‘burnout’ has reached epidemic proportions among employees in the public and private sectors. Will we end up killing ourselves? Or will we be able to find meaning and joy in the work?

“Our modern world has turned the hospitals into health factories and patients into objects”, testifies Jérôme le Maire. “Efficiency, productivity, performance – this has become a mantra for managers. We knew for decades what happens if we expose the animals to stress: they will eventually eat each other. But what happens when you expose people to great stress?”

Belgium, France, Switzerland, 2016, 85 minutes

http://www.burning-out-film.com/

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/index.php