Zen & the Art of Dying

The Perfect Circle

2013

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.

Begrijpt u nu waarom ik huil?

1969

The work of Leiden professor Bastiaans on dealing with the trauma of war victims attracts the attention of filmmaker Louis van Gasteren. He decides to make a film about the psychotherapeutic treatment with LSD of a former concentration camp prisoner in the clinic of Bastiaans. Patient Joop is arrested in September 1941 and begins a long hellish journey through various camps, until he is liberated by the Russians. When he returns to his wife, he has become a completely different man. Joop suffers from nightmares and is incapable of normal human contact. With two cameras, Van Gasteren records approximately six and a half hours of the first treatment that Joop undergoes with Bastiaans (four more will follow later). Special attention is paid to details: Joop's hands, the sweat on his forehead, a tear running slowly down his cheek. Van Gasteren reduces the recordings to more than an hour.

7 Vidas

2025

A community of cats lives in the Soledade Cemetery Park in Belém. "7 Vidas" follows these animals through a fictional letter written by one of them to his former owner. With real images of the cats among graves and trees, the film builds a sensitive narrative about abandonment, freedom and memory, revealing the poetry hidden in the coexistence between life and death.

W milczeniu

2011

Until now, they have stood on the sidelines. They have not appeared before the cameras. They have not taken part in public discussion. It is mainly to them that the documentary film by the well-known journalist Ewa Ewart was devoted. It shows the face of the Smolensk catastrophe through the eyes of the victims' families. April 10, 2010 went down in the memory of Poles as a day of national drama. But for the characters in the film, it was the day of their greatest personal drama. Along with the presidential couple, their loved ones passed away in shocking circumstances. For most, the time passing since the Smolensk catastrophe does not bring relief. Ewa Ewart and her film crew accompany the families at various stages of their struggle with difficult emotions. The film is in the process of being made and will include sequences and stills that have not been used anywhere before.

Autopsy

1973

Mondo-style docudrama about a war correspondent who comes back home and has a spiritual crisis about his own mortality. Surreal fantasy sequences are mixed with graphic real autopsy footage.

La face cachée de l'homme en noir

2025

You've seen him interview Mikhail Gorbachev, Angelina Jolie, Robbie Williams, Mariah Carey, Brad Pitt, Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro... You know him, but you don't really know him. Everyone has talked about Ardisson without ever getting close to the truth about him. My ambition: to reveal the man behind the costume of "The Man in Black." I thought to myself: if anyone can figure him out, it's me, a journalist and portraitist who has lived with him for 15 years. Who is the private Thierry behind the spectacular Ardisson? What we discover is how much Ardisson's personal history reflects the eras he has lived through, their contradictions, their utopias, their excesses, their violence. Like so many facets of a man and of society at the turn of the century.

The Life After Death Project

2013

A fascinating quest for proof of life after death -- a true-life enigma that begins with one small, odd incident and mushrooms into a huge scientific inquiry into apparent messages from the 'Other Side.'

Merci, au revoir, je t’aime

2022