With this inventive portrait, director Kirsten Johnson seeks a way to keep her 86-year-old father alive forever. Utilizing moviemaking magic and her family’s dark humor, she celebrates Dr. Dick Johnson’s last years by staging fantasies of death and beyond. Together, dad and daughter confront the great inevitability awaiting us all.
Direction
Johnson blurs documentary and fantasy seamlessly
Acting
Dick Johnson's deadpan charm steals every scene
Editing
Cuts between staged deaths and real decline gut you
Director
Kirsten Johnson
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Kirsten Johnson previously shot deaths professionally as a cinematographer for other documentaries—this was her first time directing.
The chocolate cake 'funeral' scene where Dick critiques his own eulogy was entirely unscripted; he improvised complaints about the catering.
US
