Dying Alive

Directed by Benoît Brière

Montreal, a multigenerational house loaded with books, paintings and knick-knacks, so many memories revived on the evening of one last Christmas Eve. Luc, a retired pediatrician and teacher in his eighties, lives with his son François, a pediatrician like his father, and François' wife Esther. Suffering and physically diminished, the old man has now decided to end his life. In a corrosive and sensitive verbal joust, he asks his son to end his days in privacy. The son then takes him on an existential and circus-like journey through the streets of Montreal where the father is supposed to go to his final destination, a hospital where he will be confronted with his ultimate wish: the choice between the finality of medical aid to die or a return to square one, the small pleasures of what remains of his life, alive.