- guardian.co.uk,
- Monday March 10 2008 12:55 GMT
Now here's the type of film I'm looking for: provocative, ingenious, low-budget, compelling and fresh - it was only finished two weeks ago. Its pitch was intriguing: "Documentary Filmmaker looking for suicidal individual to follow from first preparation to final act."
It's actually a work of fiction but it deserves a better title than "mockumentary". It's more like a real film of a fake documentary. A trio of film students post the aforementioned ad on the internet, and another student (ie. the REAL director, Daniel Stamm) films their progress, which is what we're watching.
The students settle on Matt, a serious young Englishman with a terminal brain tumour who's decided to end his life on his own terms. Despite the ethical debates over what they're doing, their attempts to document Matt's death responsibly come undone as they start to befriend him.
Observer and the observed infect each other, and we're soon in a complex situation, with the clock ticking inexorably. It was so well executed, I occasionally forgot I was watching a work of fiction. One woman in the audience didn't realise it was fake, and harangued both the film-makers for making it and the audience for watching it. Under the circumstances, that's the highest compliment.
