The End

One of the most powerfully intimate films ever made about the final stages of life, The End began as a bold experiment. In November 2001, director Kirby Dick invited terminal patients and their families in a hospice program to take home cameras and record their last experiences on earth. Surprisingly, many patients and families embraced the concept. The resulting film is a profound and moving chronicle of five hospice patients whose stories are in turns honest, humorous, and heartbreaking. Examining such profound issues as the meaning of suffering, the desire for love and forgiveness, and the horror of death, the film is an intensely personal meditation on the experience of death, both for the dying and for those who must go on living.