The Dying
“The Dying” is a contemplative journey into the liminal space between life and death. The film observes men and women on the fragile edge of existence, capturing the precise moment when breath lingers yet the body begins to surrender. In this suspended state, they are no longer fully alive, nor have they crossed into the unknown — they exist in that fleeting threshold where the weight of the earthly dissolves and the passage to another dimension quietly begins. Through stark imagery and haunting presence, the film reflects on mortality, transcendence, and the fragile beauty of the final human transition.
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Massimo ScognamiglioDirector
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Massimo ScognamiglioWriter
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Massimo ScognamiglioProducer
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Project Type:Experimental, Short, Web / New Media
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Runtime:2 minutes 10 seconds
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Completion Date:July 31, 2025
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Production Budget:35 USD
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Country of Origin:Italy
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Country of Filming:Italy
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Language:English
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
Born in Rome, he lives and works in Rome.
Artist, photographer, and digital evangelist, he paints, photographs, and has been exhibiting since the mid-’90s. From 2006 he lived for two years in California, then for a brief period he moved to Paris where he paints, photographs, designs performances, his most famous Rebirth, which took place in 2016 at Place de la République. Today, he lives and works in Rome, in his studio-house-gallery known as Le Petit Atelier.
He has exhibited at the MACRO Museum Asylum in Rome, with the project “Where is the future?”, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, also in Rome, with the exhibition “The Shining Consciousness”, moreover he has entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art of Vibo Valentia LIMEN ; in addition to other galleries in Italy and abroad.
Massimo Scognamiglio stands as a poignant figure in the landscape of contemporary art, his works a testament to the profound layers of human introspection. Without resorting to hyperbole, it is evident that his art delves into the crevices of mental unease while simultaneously radiating a palpable life force. Scognamiglio’s oeuvre is a journey through the psyche, with series like “Gli Strappi” (1998-2004) which laid bare the raw edges of human emotion, and “Ciclo delle Stanze” (2008-today), where each room becomes a chapter of an introspective narrative.
In 2023 and 2022 he enters the five finalists of the prestigious Exibart Prize.
The Dying is born from my continuous exploration of the fragile territories of existence: madness, suffering, love, and the silent spaces that lie between. In this film, I wanted to capture the threshold between life and death, that elusive instant where reality unravels and another dimension begins to reveal itself.
My art moves between photography, painting, performance, and cinema — always confronting the unseen, the hidden, the uncomfortable. I do not seek to beautify pain but to expose its raw presence, transforming it into a testimony that oscillates between irony and tragedy, memory and vision.
With The Dying, I extend my artistic practice into cinema as a mirror of human fragility — an attempt to give form to what usually remains unspeakable: the last moment of passage, where humanity reveals both its greatest despair and its deepest poetry.
