Faced with the uncertainty of their final days, three hospice patients step into the unknown—preparing for a profound journey with psilocybin-assisted therapy. Blending documentary, animation, and archive, How to Die is a poetic meditation on living and dying.
SYNOPSIS
We don’t in fact need a terminal diagnosis in order to deeply contemplate and befriend the presence of our death; but that’s what so many of us wait for.
-Stephen Jenkinson
How do we reconcile ourselves to terminal illness - and what resources do we have to draw on, when we find ourselves unprepared ?
How to Die is an intimate, character-driven film, woven through with animation. It takes us behind the scenes of a pioneering study exploring how psilocybin-assisted therapy can change the experience of hospice patients suffering from demoralization, as they approach end of life.
Filmed over the course of two years, the film witnesses the journey of 3 patients, capturing their emotions, doubts and fears - then following them through the study, their psilocybin journey and integration, exploring what’s changed for them, what insights they've gained. Full access to recordings of patients’ sessions with researchers – their therapy meetings before and after dosing, and the dosing sessions themselves – invites us to witness patients’ experience up close, with revealing and heartbreaking results.
Director Statement
Having lived through my father’s dying process as I made this film, it was a profound experience to witness the journey of these dying patients, the extraordinary, compassionate work of the research team to support them, and all the questions, challenges and revelations that arose. I hope this film might help and inspire others living through the process of dying, supporting the dying, or reflecting on mortality before they get there.
On a deeper level, the film is about our relationship to suffering and death, in the everyday: questions that affect all of us, about how to be human. I’m a longtime meditation practitioner: it’s a lifetime project to learn to breathe, slow down, and be present. Through the course of making the film, I realized so much of the therapists’ work and approach, beyond the (more-hyped) aspect of psychedelics – was about doing this. That resonated on a deep level, and as we shape the film, those practices are core to our creative and narrative approach.
Supporter Statement
Hi Robin—I just watched your film.
I was enthralled. It was so affecting, so beautifully shot, so generous. Thank you for sharing it with me! You’re an amazing filmmaker.
- Laurie Benenson
Laurie Benenson founded Movieline Magazine, serving as its editor-in-chief for six years. She went on to write for the New York Times Arts and Leisure Section for five years as a West Coast correspondent on film and television. Her films include Dirt! The Movie, , Kiss the Ground, Cracked Up, Fantastic Fungi, and Changing of the Gods.
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Robin McKenna
Robin McKenna is a filmmaker specializing in creative, artful documentaries. Her feature doc GIFT, adapted from Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, was released theatrically in 2019 (“Elliptical, poetic, and visually arresting” -The Boston Globe) and nominated for the Allan King Award for Excellence in Documentary, Director’s Guild of Canada Awards.
Her short animated doc Thanadoula (2021), co-produced with the NFB, won an honourable mention for Best Short Film at Ottawa’s prestigious International Animation Festival. Other short films include Genevieve Bujold, Art = Vie, a lyrical portrait on 16mm for the Governor-General Awards for the Performing Arts (2019), and Weather, for Greetings from Isolation, an artists’ collective film series during the pandemic (2020).
The Jungle Prescription, following doctors working with ayahuasca to treat addiction, aired on CBC's The Nature of Things (Golden Sheaf nomination for Best Science, Nature or Technology program, 2012). She has worked as a filmmaker-mentor in Indigenous communities with Wapikoni Mobile, and done cinematography for films including The Take, with Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis in Argentina (2004). She lives outside Montréal, Canada.
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Women Make Movies (WMM), Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit media arts organization registered with the New York Charities Bureau of New York State and accepts charitable donations on behalf of this project. Your donation will be spent by the filmmaker(s) toward the production and completion of this media project. No services or goods are provided by Women Make Movies, the filmmaker(s) or anyone else associated with this project in exchange for your charitable donation.
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