DAD

When my father told me he was going to have a medically assisted death due to a terminal cancer diagnosis, my first instinct was not to make a film, but to resist the possibility of losing him. I reached for treatment options and stories of recovery, while he, as a doctor, had already begun confronting what lay ahead. It was a friend who suggested that I use filmmaking as a way to stay close to my father while preparing to lose him. That became the beginning of this film.

What started as a means of preserving time together grew into something deeper. Through the camera, my father and I entered conversations about dignity, autonomy, fear, and how one chooses to meet death. The camera was more than just a tool for documentation—it created a space of intimacy, reflection, and exchange. Observing the care my father brought to ordinary rituals, I began to see not a life fading, but a life still being lived. His humor and sense of peace challenged my assumptions about dying and reshaped the film into something beyond a story of loss.

I approached the film observationally, using pacing, silence, and attention to everyday detail to honor my father’s presence in the world. What emerged was not a document of dying, but a portrait of man at the edge of life. I hope the film challenges viewers to consider not only how we face death, but how we decide to write our final chapter.