When the Water Stops Flowing
Jonathan Stavleu explores, in a stream-of-consciousness video essay, the relationship people have with water and what happens when access to it is taken away. For this work, he examines anecdotal histories he has heard from Estonians, as well as stories from his own family history in the Netherlands, weaving them together into a journal-like narrative.
Chronic
David is a nurse who works with terminally ill patients. Dedicated to his profession, he develops strong relationships with the people he cares for. But outside of work, it's a different story altogether.
The Old Guard
Three friends leave their village for a retirement home travelling the countryside
Turtle and Albion
While their mother goes to work, Albion has to take care of his strong-willed little brother Mensur, who suffers from a mysterious illness. Together, they try to ignore the fact that Mensur's health is getting worse. Until Mensur confides a secret to his older brother. He is not sick at all—in fact, he is turning into a turtle.
Fairyland
A father-daughter relationship evolves through an era of bohemian decadence in 1970s San Francisco to the sober and heartbreaking era of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
Serving Life
SERVING LIFE documents an extraordinary hospice program where hardened criminals care for dying fellow inmates. Narrated and executive produced by Academy Award®-winner Forest Whitaker, the film takes viewers inside Louisiana's maximum security prison at Angola, where the average sentence is more than 90 years.
Good Morning
When Sumi, a high school senior raised at an orphanage, decides to suicide, hospice nurse Seojin dramatically stops her. Nowhere else to go, Sumi visits Seojin's hospital to find a way to end her life. For the first time, she finds attention, love, and comfort from those who are spending their last moments in life.
Winter Hymns
A palliative care doctor meets with a series of dying patients.
Into Nightmares
After a mysterious trauma, an elderly man begins to suffer from sleep paralysis, haunted by a sinister female figure. Sent to a care home, he discovers his new roommate behaves in disturbing ways-rituals he can only witness while paralyzed. As other residents begin to vanish, he must confront the dark presence invading his room before it consumes him too.
Terminal
In the future, through The Terminal technology, the population are physically reconfigured from the nervous system up to fit their next job.
Suscipe
After years, a Catholic priest tries to rekindle a broken relationship with his secret daughter. But to her, he's just the man (or father) who never wanted her.
Dignitas - Death on Prescription
Switzerland is the only country in the world that allows foreigners to come and die on its territory. Since its founding in 1998, more than a thousand people have traveled to Zurich to end their lives with the help of the organization Dignitas. "Dignitas - Death on Prescription" is a documentary about an organization that provides people with terminal and incurable illnesses, intense unrelenting pain, and depression with a peaceful death. The organization's founder, lawyer Ludwig Minelli, is often the target of insults, especially from politicians, despite the fact that most Swiss citizens support the option of medically assisted suicide.
Stopping for Death: The Nurses of Wells House Hospice
A year following four hospice nurses who question their calling as they face emotional distress, financial hardships and the possible closure of their facility.
The Perfect Circle
Earth to earth, water to water. The body weight of a newborn child is up to 85 percent water, but in adulthood, the ratio can be cut into half. In a way, people dry up as they grow older. In Claudia Tosi’s documentary, people drink water, watch the rain and wait for their death. The Perfect Circle depicts a man and a woman, Ivano and Meris, who spend their final days at a hospice in the hills of Reggio Emilia, Northern Italy. Their illnesses are in the terminal stage and they know that death is only a matter of time. But the ever-nearing end may fleetingly be forgotten, like when they close their eyes and get lost in the music – until the bodies being carried out next door once again remind them of the inevitable. Death also becomes a part of life for the patients’ loved ones, who want to spend the last available moments with the soon to be departed.
A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin
A New Understanding explores the treatment of end-of-life anxiety in terminally ill cancer patients using psilocybin, a psychoactive compound found in some mushrooms, to facilitate deeply spiritual experiences. The documentary explores the confluence of science and spirituality in the first psychedelic research studies since the 1970s with terminally ill patients. As a society we devote a great deal of attention to treating cancer, but very little to treating the human being who is dying of cancer.
Sundowning
A young woman with gerontophobia who goes to work at a hospice after neglecting her dying parents. Looking for a way to redeem herself, she soon discovers that redemption may come with a cost, as the hospice hides a terrifying secret.
Sibirien
Still Visage
While caring for her dying patient, a hospice nurse begins to suspect they're not alone.
The Hospice
At the hospice, the average remaining time for patients is 21 days. These patients prepare for their deaths. Park Soo-Myeong is 40 something year old man who is also a husband and father. Kim Jung-Ja is a mother of two sons. Park Jin-Woo was a math teacher. Shin Chang-Yeol lived a lonely life.
Death Is But a Dream
Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love and grace. Beyond the physical realities of dying are unseen processes that are remarkably life-affirming. These include dreams that are unlike any regular dream. Described as "more real than real," these end-of-life experiences resurrect past relationships, meaningful events and themes of love and forgiveness; they restore life's meaning and mark the transition from distress to comfort and acceptance.