Exit: The Right to Die ( Exit ) ( Salida: El derecho a morir )

Exit: The Right to Die (DVD) (*)

Out of Stock

Original Title: Exit
Alternate Title: Salida: El derecho a morir
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
French ( Dolby Digital Stereo )
German ( Subtitles )
Italian ( Subtitles )
Spanish ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
Switzerland ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
76 min

Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen (1.78:1)

Special Features:
Interactive Menu
Scene Access

Movie filmed in 2005 and produced in:
Switzerland ( Germany, Central Europe )

Directed By:
Fernand Melgar

Written By:
Fernand Melgar

Actors:
Fernand Melgar

Synopsis:

The focus of Fernand Melgar's earnest documentary about assisted suicide is so narrow that the movie plays like a stodgy promotional film for the Swiss organization Exit A.D.M.D., which helps terminally ill patients end their own lives. The movie concentrates on escort-patient relationships in which the volunteer escorts interview applicants and help those who are accepted prepare and sign a statement of intent and choose a departure date. In the movie's view, these volunteers are heroic men and women who, at enormous psychic cost to themselves, befriend their clients and rescue them from unbearable pain and suffering. Despite the humanity and courage exhibited by the members of Exit, the film is inescapably grim

No one knows the day or the hour. When illness strikes, accompanied by pain and physical decline, there we are, faced with death. The outlook on what remains of life appears dismal and full of anguish. How to spare oneself, and one's closest family, slow agony? Switzerland is the only country in the world where associations, such as EXIT, quite legally provide suicide assistance to people at the end of their lives. For over twenty years volunteers have accompanied sick and handicapped people towards a death of their choice that seems more dignified to them. In this documentary, these escorts and the people they accompany tackle death head-on. Not like a taboo or an unacceptable end, but like a release. With their words and gestures, their convictions and their doubts, they talk about the path they have travelled. In a society tending to control everything, they refer us back to this quintessential, intimate question: Is choosing our death not our ultimate freedom?

Documentary. An examination of assisted suicide, which is currently legal only in Switzerland.

This product was added to our catalog on Monday 02 January, 2012.