Ethical reflections on filming death in end-of-life documentaries

Abstract

The end-of-life documentaries that focus on natural death struggle with the question as to whether cinematic technology is able to express death as an event and whether it should even aspire to do so. In the process of filming dying people, questions of vulnerability, privacy, and empowerment become important, and each filmmaker makes ethical choices about how to approach the topic. By interviewing 14 documentary directors, using one audio commentary, and analysing 14 of their documentary films, I recognised two main approaches to filming death. Most documentaries exclude the moment of death, which becomes a private event outside the public eye. These films narrate the experiences of living people and use metaphorical means to communicate the moment of death. They respect the physical vulnerability of the dying people, and protect the viewer from potentially shocking images. Occasionally, some documentaries include deathbed scenes that confront physical aspects of dying. These films create an affective and embodied connection to death and dying in ways that invite the viewer to co-experience the process. In this article, I discuss the ethical approaches related to these two approaches through questions of consent, the films’ content, and viewer’s responsibility.