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Film Details:
Total Run Time: 73mins | Language: English | Subtitles: English, Spanish, Portuguese | Captions: Yes | Director/Producer: Scott Kirschenbaum | Producers: Prerana Thakurdesai, Hannah Fowler, Alex Harvey, Landon Maloney | Executive Producers: Gail Harris, Jessica Zitter, David Seidler, Tommy Pallotta
Synopsis:
Ethan Sisser, a young man with terminal brain cancer, sits alone in his hospital room. When he starts livestreaming his death journey on social media, thousands of people around the world join to celebrate his courage. Still, Ethan envisions more – to teach the world how to die without fear. To do that, he needs to film his death.
Honoring Ethan's wish, his doctor Aditi Sethi transports him to an idyllic house in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. What unfolds next is a story rarely glimpsed: how a community of strangers helps a young man die with grace.
A sensory immersion into leaving the body, “The Last Ecstatic Days” reveals a man who will not let us forget him – even after he’s taken his final breath.
Reviews:
“…courageous end-of-life chronicle, which overflows with compassion and shows us how to live mindfully while embracing curiosity about what lies beyond.”
Dr. Monica J. Casper
Professor of Sociology, Seattle University
"The Last Ecstatic Days is an incredibly moving film about dying with dignity, humor, grace, and agency. As a scholar and teacher of health, illness, death, and embodiment, I cannot recommend it highly enough for both educators and the general public. The film powerfully demonstrates that mortality, though inevitable, can be beautiful, too. Heartbreaking and heartmending in equal measure."
Wayne Olan, MD
George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences
"I was blown away by this film. I’ve worked in the medical field for over 30 years and never seen someone control their end of life journey like this. I wish this for all my patients and their loved ones when possible. Anyone working in medicine should experience this."
“The Last Ecstatic Days brings you so close to the bedside of a dying man that you can forget you are watching a film. It offers access to an intense, fundamental human experience that American society too often buries in medical systems not designed to help people generate meaning in their final days on earth. The community that forms around the wishes of a dying man is The Last Ecstatic Days’ most powerful outcome — it helps us reimagine how we might meet the ends of our lives.”
Ashby Kinch, Ph.D
Vice Provost & Dean of the
Graduate School University of New Hamphire
“The Last Ecstatic Days inspires conversation about the relationship between culture, death, ritual, and care, and it asks us to wonder – Can death be an experience of community and connection? Can it be filled with beauty? Can we really change what we might expect at the end of life? This film left me filled with hope and a sense of deep, abiding beauty. Everyone should watch it."
Amy Ratto Parks, EdD
Executive Director
Institute of Health & Humanities, University of Montana
“The Last Ecstatic Days is a remarkable portrait of dying that provides a glimmering vision of warm-hearted people helping a young man named Ethan cross the line between time and eternity. Throughout the film, Ethan recites his mantra: ‘I am embodied, I am empowered, I am ecstatic.’ As the credits rolled, I felt the same.”
Jeff Keith
Professor, Warren Wilson College
“I was fortunate enough to see an early version of "The Last Ecstatic Days" at our Centre for Death and Society Conference and was blown away. It is a powerful, life-affirming documentary: sad, witty, and deeply moving all at once.”