Françoise Dolto, children first: an intimate and revealing portrait of the great paediatrician and psychoanalyst, a far remove from how she has been usually and somewhat erroneously portrayed…

Synopsis

Marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Françoise Dolto, this intimate and revealing portrait of the great paediatrician and psychoanalyst is a far remove from how she has been usually and somewhat erroneously portrayed…
Even from her early childhood, the young Françoise Marette felt ill-adapted to the very bourgeois and straitlaced milieu she was born into. She broke away from her family and in 1932 began to study medicine and psychoanalysis. She rapidly placed the child at the centre of what would be her lifetime’s work.
A “Doctor of Education”, she overthrew the received ideas of her day, addressing the child as a subject unto itself and working tirelessly to understand all forms of children’s unconscious production, especially drawings. Controversial and often under fire, she went on to hospital train a whole generation of psychoanalysts and even intervened on the radio to answer listeners’ questions, both parents and children. Her personal and professional lives were closely intertwined, feeding each other.
Home movies, archive footage, testimony of those close to her, depict a little known and unexpected Françoise Dolto, full of untarnished passion and energy. Actor Richard Berry, a firm admirer of both the woman and the great doctor, introduces us to her world.