By Allen King

About the Film

This film is about the experience of dying. Five terminal patients in a Palliative Care Unit share the last days of their lives and deaths with a film crew. They do so in the hope that their experience will be useful to the audience in managing its own fear of dying and death. Their families, friends and staff share in the task. Without narration or interviews, the camera simply and intimately observes the events that occur over the course of fourteen weeks as five people come face to face with the doorway through which we all must pass.

About the Filmmaker

Internationally acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Allan King is among his country’s best filmmakers. His most famous film is his debut Warrendale, a wrenching documentary examination of life in a home for emotional disturbed teens. So brutal and disturbing was the 1966 made-for-television film that neither the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation nor the BBC would air the film. He released it theatrically in 1966 and it won a prize at Cannes and earned him a reputation as a major filmmaker. King was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. Before becoming a director he obtained a degree in philosophy, worked as a cabbie and traveled throughout Europe. In 1954 he began working for the CBC and became a television director in 1956. During the ’60s, King began working independently as a director and producer. Later he took much of the footage he had not used inWarrendale and used it to create Children in Conflict, an 18-part television series. In addition to producing and directing features and television shows in Canada, King also made films in Great Britain.