This selection of documentaries explores the many faces of death, grief, and remembrance. Each comes to the same universal experience from a different direction: how do we face mortality, how do we say goodbye, and how do we preserve our connection with those we have lost?
About This Selection - and Who It Is For
This collection is intended for those who feel ready to draw closer to questions that are so often left unspoken. These documentary films offer neither a single explanation nor a ready-made formula for grief. Instead, they present personal stories, difficult questions, and interpretations.
Some are comforting, others unsettling; some are contemplative, while others are unexpectedly humorous. It is worth choosing in accordance with your present emotional state. What they share is an understanding of death not merely as the end of life, but through the bonds we form, the choices we make, and the ways in which we remember.
Surviving Death (2021) - Documentary Series
What happens to us after death? Does consciousness cease when the body stops functioning, or might some part of us continue to exist? Based on Leslie Kean’s book of the same name, this six-part documentary series explores questions that have occupied humanity for centuries. Through accounts from people who have had near-death experiences, bereaved relatives, mediums, and researchers, it considers the possibility of an afterlife, apparitions, mediumistic communication, and reincarnation.
The series is at its most compelling when it focuses on personal stories: how people try to make meaning of experiences close to death and how they seek a continuing connection with those they have lost. These accounts may offer comfort or food for thought, particularly to viewers who have experienced bereavement themselves. The series, however, is not concerned solely with the psychology of grief. It also devotes considerable attention to spiritual and paranormal phenomena whose scientific status remains disputed.
Who is it for?
Viewers interested in near-death experiences, the afterlife, mediums, or reincarnation, and those willing to listen openly to personal accounts of such experiences. The series may offer hope or a new perspective to people who are grieving, but it can also be emotionally demanding. Those facing a recent loss may wish to choose individual episodes with care.
What can you expect?
Six episodes: some draw on research findings, while others are based primarily on individual experiences and beliefs. These experiences may be real and deeply meaningful to those describing them, but this does not mean that the supernatural explanations presented have been scientifically established.
My Love, Don’t Cross That River (2014)
My Love, Don’t Cross That River is a moving South Korean documentary about the final season shared by an elderly married couple. The husband and wife have lived together for more than seventy years. Through the quiet details of their daily lives, the film reveals what it means to remain beside one another after so many decades - and what it feels like to face the knowledge that one of them will soon have to say goodbye.
The film does not manufacture grand dramatic moments. The approaching loss becomes palpable through small gestures, shared memories, and the care they show each other. It is a tender, poetic story about love, mortality, and how we might let someone go while allowing the memory of a shared life to endure.
Who is it for?
Viewers drawn to stories of love in old age, the loss of a life partner, and the quiet, intimate nature of remembrance.
What can you expect?
A slow, intimate, and lyrical documentary that approaches grief through love and a lifetime shared.
Griefwalker (2008)
This philosophical documentary explores death and loss through the work and ideas of thinker and grief guide Stephen Jenkinson. It offers no simple answers and does not ask how we can “get over” grief as quickly as possible. Instead, it suggests that grief is a natural part of life - something we may not need to eliminate or suppress.
Jenkinson’s reflections invite us to reconsider loss. What might happen if, rather than trying to bring grief to an immediate conclusion, we learned to live alongside it? In this way, the film is not only about death, but about our relationship with life itself.
Who is it for?
Those who are not looking for ready-made answers, but wish to think more deeply about what it means to live with loss.
What can you expect?
Contemplative philosophical conversations and a deliberately paced film that encourages reflection on death and the nature of grief.
The Departure (2017)
The Departure follows Ittetsu Nemoto, a Zen Buddhist priest who tries to help people struggling with thoughts of suicide. In an unusual way, the film speaks about life through the question of death: what can lead someone to feel that they no longer want to live, and what might help them find something to hold on to again?
In the course of his work, Nemoto must also confront his own questions, relationships, and the limits of what simple answers can do in the face of another person’s pain. One of the film’s most important questions is therefore: what makes life worth staying for?
Who is it for?
Adult viewers interested in philosophical approaches to meaning, psychological suffering, and our relationship with death.
What can you expect?
A personal and thought-provoking documentary exploring suffering, mortality, and the search for meaning in life.
10 (2014)
This unusual, twenty-nine-minute Dutch documentary brings together boys and men of different ages as they listen to the stories of the generations ahead of them. With a simple yet effective structure, the film approaches life’s great questions: happiness, love, loss, death, and what it means to live an entire human life.
Placed side by side, the stories of different generations reveal that although our circumstances change, certain questions accompany us all. Grief is therefore not treated as an isolated experience, but as a natural part of being human.
Who is it for?
Those looking for a brief yet meaningful film about the human lifespan, the connection between generations, and mortality.
What can you expect?
A short, sensitive documentary with an unconventional structure, asking profound questions about life and death through seemingly simple stories.
Heaven Must Be Like This (2024)
Heaven Must Be Like This begins with three friends talking in a Lisbon bar, but their everyday conversation gradually becomes more personal. They speak about family, loss, hope, and death, slowly opening up to one another about their own fears and experiences.
The strength of this twenty-six-minute film lies in its naturalness. There is no imposing narration or elaborate explanation; its ideas unfold through an honest conversation between friends. Death is no longer presented as a distant or abstract subject, but as something we can speak about with one another when a safe space has been created.
Who is it for?
Viewers curious about the immediate, human side of grief and death, as well as those interested in how we talk to one another about loss.
What can you expect?
An intimate, conversational, and personal film that begins in an ordinary setting and gradually reaches some of the deepest questions of life and death.
To My Grandfather (2026)
To My Grandfather is a quiet, personal documentary about a ninety-two-year-old widow who remains alone in the home she once shared with her husband. Its director, Sofia Samoylova, is the woman’s granddaughter, allowing the film to become both a personal farewell to a beloved grandfather and a portrait of the grandmother left behind with the memories of their life together.
The film does not concentrate on grief’s grand or dramatic moments, but on its everyday reality: spaces left empty, memories held close, and the transformation of a home once shared by two people when only one remains. Despite its brevity, it sensitively shows that grief is often not a single moment, but the slow learning of a new way of life.
Who is it for?
Those wishing to understand the quieter, less visible side of grief, and viewers who feel a close connection to family memories and the stories held within a home.
What can you expect?
A quiet, intimate, and personal documentary portraying absence and remembrance through the daily life of an elderly woman.
Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020)
Dick Johnson Is Dead is an unconventional and unexpectedly funny film about mortality. Director Kirsten Johnson and her father, Dick, stage a series of possible deaths for him, playfully constructing different situations in which he dies. Behind the game, however, lies a very real circumstance: Dick is living with dementia, and his daughter knows that one day she will have to say goodbye.
The film is funny, painful, and moving all at once. Its playfulness becomes a form of defence against the unspeakable: perhaps by rehearsing death, father and daughter can prepare for it in some small way. As the film unfolds, however, it becomes increasingly clear that preparing for death does not necessarily mean letting go. It may instead express just how much the other person means to us.
Who is it for?
Those who are not looking only for sombre films about grief and death, but are open to a distinctive approach that is both humorous and deeply affecting.
What can you expect?
A film filled with dark humour, playfulness, and profound emotion, approaching mortality and the anticipated loss of a parent in an entirely unusual way.
Last Flight Home (2022)
Last Flight Home tells the story of a family during the final days of a life. Director Ondi Timoner’s father, Eli, is terminally ill and decides that he wants to determine the circumstances of his own death. His family becomes part of that decision as they try to live through their remaining days together.
The film is not only about death, but about the possibility of saying goodbye. It shows what can happen when a family does not have to turn away from approaching loss, but is able to face it consciously. Through shared memories, conversations, and gestures of love, the film reveals how time together may become more precious as death draws near.
Who is it for?
Adult viewers looking for a sensitive and deeply personal film about dying, farewell, and how a family might prepare for the loss of someone they love.
What can you expect?
A highly personal and emotionally intense documentary about the end of life, a family’s farewell, and the question of personal autonomy.
DINGO (2026)
DINGO explores remembrance and loss through the relationship between an eighty-one-year-old street photographer, whose life has followed an unconventional path, and his daughter. Photography is more than an artistic practice within the film: the images become traces of a life, moments preserved against time.
One of the film’s most compelling questions is what we leave behind and how others preserve our memory. Photographs both document the past and keep alive what has already gone. DINGO therefore approaches grief through remembrance, exploring how objects, images, and stories can become the continuing memory of someone we have lost.
Who is it for?
Those interested in the relationship between photography, family memories, and remembrance after loss.
What can you expect?
A personal and visually expressive documentary about memory, family relationships, and what it means to preserve someone through images.
ImportantThe articles, film features on this website are intended to inform and support. They are not a substitute for professional care from a psychologist, psychiatrist, or psychotherapist, nor for medical treatment when needed.
If you feel that the pain of your loss has become too difficult to carry alone, please do not remain isolated. Share what you are feeling with someone you trust and consider seeking professional support. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness; it is an important step towards healing.
