Is it ever rational to choose death? On Independence Day at Stern Ranch, 77-year-old solar energy pioneer Bob Stern finds out he’s seriously ill – possibly dying. Meanwhile, an elderly in-law is dying on artificial life support. Bob decides to cheat that fate and take his own life. His family tries to stop him. Bob sets up a video camera. Daughter Susan Stern explores “rational suicide,” the “right-to-die” and the difficult end-of-life choices faced by an aging population.
Christian has one year left to live, one year to get to know his newborn son Philip, and on year to make sure Philip will have a chance to get to know him. Heritage is a film about father and son relationship.
Thérèse Clerc is one of the great figures of militantism. From the struggle to legalize abortion to the fight for equal rights of men and women and the battle for gay rights, she’s been on the front lines of all of them. She has just learned that she has an incurable disease and has decided to take a last look back over her life, a tender and lucid look at the battles and the love that went with them.
Three juxtaposing stories taking place in Portugal, Austria and Cuba create an intimate and poetic portrait of the daily lives and struggles of the elderly in an unstable world, seen through the eyes of their grandchildren.
Award-winning French writer Christine Angot goes on a business trip to Strasbourg where her father lived before dying several years ago. It is the city where she met him for the first time at the age of 13, and where he sexually abused her over the following years. His wife and children still live there. Angot takes a camera and knocks on the doors of her family to push them to clarify their attitudes to her father’s crime that stretched over so many years. A cinematographic journey that challenges social norms and family perspectives in dealing with incest.
Filmmaker Diego Gutiérrez knows that he is soon to lose two loved ones: his mother Gina Coppe and his best friend Danniel Danniel. Both ask him to film them during this final phase of their lives—Gina in her apartment in Mexico City, Danniel in a Dutch restaurant where he feels at home. What stories do they want to leave behind?
As the muse of Hal Hartley’s indie classics and as writer/director of the critically acclaimed Waitress, Adrienne Shelly was a shining star in the indie film firmament. A devoted young mother, her life was right on track until her husband found her dead. Filmmaker Andy Ostroy has been fighting to discover the truth about his wife’s death ever since.
Families from across the U.S. discuss how they cope with loss and address common misconceptions about grief. Through candid personal stories and conversations with experts in the grief field, the film also presents ideas for how family and friends can better support each other through loss.
"What could be more unsettling than a man close to death whose profound arrogance drives him relentlessly to hang onto both his power and his writing, to the bitter end?" In the twilight of his second seven-year term, François Mitterrand was alone. Ravaged by illness and abandoned by a large majority of the Socialist Party, who would not forgive him for the disastrous outcome of the March 1993 elections, the Head of State was preparing to tackle a second round of cohabitation with the right wing. However a series of unexpected tragedies and revelations would arise, casting a shadow over the end of his reign…
This cinema-verite-style documentary interweaves the pregnancy and childbirth of a young woman with the lingering death of a cancer patient to comment on the celebration and tragedy of existence. The tenderness and intimacy of the young couple, and the mystery of birth are contrasted with the dignity of a man who faces his death without deception.
Deadly Gorgeous is a documentary about the importance of beauty even after death. Mixing fiction and reality, the film explores the world of corpse makeup artists, cemeteries and a couple that need to think about how their own funerals would be like.
The life story of the famous danish author Jakob Ejersbo is told as his two friends are struggling to reach the top of Kilimanjaro to spread his ashes from there.
After I died from suicide, I was punished for this deadly sin, to live alone in the spirit world deep in the sea, but He gave me a chance to redeem my sin by shooting a film of a philanthropist's afterlife to ask and get the merits, I've been waiting for overly time to see a philanthropist's spirit.
A young director tries to understand his estranged relationship with his father
This documentary short is a portrait of Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and 13th prime minister of Canada, John George Diefenbaker (1895-1979). Diefenbaker's political career spanned 6 decades. When he died in 1979, his state funeral and final train trip west became more a celebration of life than a victory for death.
Janette is terminally ill and wants to die in a dignified way but this is not permitted under British law. She refuses to wait for death in unbearable pain so she opts for a physician-assisted suicide in Switzerland. Before departing on the final journey she has to explain her intention to the family members and close friends.
Like a visual elegy, My Memory Is Full of Ghosts explores a reality caught between past, present and future in Homs, Syria. Behind the self-portrait of an exsanguinated population in search of normality emerge memories of the city, haunted by destruction, disfigurement and loss. A deeply moving film, a painful echo of the absurdity of war and the strength of human beings.
A short film that navigates the filmmaker's intimate journey with death and other fears. Through the filmmaker’s inner monologue, the film explores the universal struggle with mortality.