Island

In a hospice on the Isle of Wight, four individuals experience the end of life. Showing rarely seen and private events, the film follows the progression of illness for each person and, for one, the last days and hours of life, the moment of death, and after death care. A lyrical, slow cinema description of the temporality and phenomena of dying, this film sensitively witnesses the transition away from life.

This is a palliative island, the Isle of Wight, an enigmatic landscape where all around rituals persist. Parallel to bedside vigils and the rhythm of breathing, we see rescue owls on the hospice ward, the rugged coastline, and the constant ferry arrivals. A choir rehearses Brahm’s ‘German Requiem’. In the hospital pathology lab, microscopic close-ups of cancer show the interior of the bodies, our biology, our creatureliness. Death is presented as natural and everyday but also unspeakable and strange.