Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide - Documentaries

Life's Too Short
BBC1 (Scotland)—Monday 20 November 2006, 21:00 hrs
This film documentary highlights the value of palliative care while drawing attention to the challenges faced by someone who is caring for a dying person. It was filmed partly in a palliative institution in Glasgow and partly in patients’ own homes, and carefully follows the patients in their personal lives.  It also shows them getting through the difficulty and having peaceful deaths.  The documentary aims to help break down some of the taboos about talking about death and helps remove some of the fears of dying and the fears of hospices and palliative care.

Reverend Death
Channel 4 (UK)—Monday 19 May 2008, 22:00 hrs, 100 min
The Reverend George Exoo is a seemingly jolly, but not very successful Unitarian minister from Beckley, West Virginia who has drifted into helping non-terminally ill people commit suicide. George claims that so far he has helped more than 100 people commit suicide. George extols the afterlife and explains how he looks forward to his own death because it will be a great adventure. At the start of filming, Jon Ronson believes that everyone has the right to terminate their own lives. However, as the film progresses, Jon begins to change his mind and also starts to have serious reservations about what Rev. George Exoo does and about the motives of his new assistant Susan, who claims she'll help practically anyone kill themselves if the price is right. 'For George it's a calling,' she says. 'For me it's a business.' At the same time, George is facing extradition proceedings for his part in a suicide in Ireland.

BBC Scotland Investigates:  Margo MacDonald – My Right To Die
BBC One (Scotland)—16 July 2008 22:45 hrs
One of Scotland's most enduringly political figures and Parkinson's disease sufferer, uncovers the truth about assisted suicide - unearthing shocking evidence of illegal, underground assisted suicides. In deeply personal conversations with the terminally ill, ethical experts, doctors and Roman Catholic Cardinal Keith O'Brien, she struggles to decide if the law should change and meets those desperate to die and those determined to stand in their way.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cnk4t

How To Have A Good Death
BBC 2 (UK)—Thursday 30 March 2006, 21:00 hrs, 90 min
Documentary presented by Esther Rantzen will uncover evidence of disturbing inconsistencies in the quality of care for the dying in the UK.  Based on findings from the largest ever national survey on the way we deal with death and dying, How To Have A Good Death sets out to answer controversial questions such as:  Why in the UK country does the most feared illness – cancer, tend to involve the most comfortable death?  Why do so many people in the UK say they are prepared to break the law in assisting the death of those close to them?  What was the effect of the physician Harold Shipman’s conviction on the level of pain relief doctors are permitted to now offer the terminally ill at home?

A Good Time to say Goodbye?
BBC1 UK—Wednesday 10 May 2006, 19:30 hrs
It is four years since Diane Pretty died after a lengthy struggle with motor neurone disease. It was ruled that her husband Brian could not help her to die despite the fact she believed her death would be slow, painful and undignified. Since then, many terminally ill Britons have travelled to Switzerland to die, where the law is different. The documentary asks whether the time is right to revise UK legislation.

Don't Get Me Started!
Channel 5 (UK)—Tuesday 15 August 2006, 19:15 hrs, 45 min
The program highlights the growth, especially in Britain, of the idea of an “obligation to die.” Many leading thinkers in the bioethics field endorse euthanasia and assisted suicide and often argue that elderly and ill patients have the obligation to end their lives to relieve pressure on families and the health care system.

Dax's Case: Who Should Decide?
Keith Burton, Partnership for Caring, 58 min
This gripping documentary struggles with a profoundly troubling bioethical problem. Under what circumstances does a severely injured patient have the right to refuse treatment? This film is unique because it spans a ten-year period. This is an outstanding resource to provoke a debate about the complex issues that occur in decision making. Useful for working with students in ethics, medicine, nursing, social work, chaplaincy and others that struggle with these difficult questions. The video is designed to be used in two parts.

Death on Request
Director: Maarten Nederhorst, Fanlight Productions
This powerful new film from The Netherlands presents the issues of euthanasia from the very human perspectives of those involved, without venturing into social, political or ethical polemics. Following a man who is in the last stages of Lou Gehrig's disease as he chooses euthanasia to end his suffering, this moving documentary includes his perspective and those of his wife and his physician, as it explores the emotional, ethical and medical complexity of this contemporary dilemma.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325230/

The Suicide Tourist (Also known as: Right to Die?)
Director: John Zaritsky, CTV Original Documentary
Country of origin and year: Canada, 2007
90 min
The controversy over a person’s right to die at a time and place of their own choosing has become focused on the Swiss organization Dignitas.  Dignitas, in Zurich Switzerland, is the only place where a person seeking an assisted suicide can legally be helped to die, no matter where they are from – or what their state of health.  For a year, Oscar-winning Canadian director John Zaritsky had exclusive access to Dignitas, and its clients. This includes a Vancouver couple in their early 70s who have travelled to Dignitas with the desire to end their lives together. Also at Dignitas, is American Craig Ewert.

Without Walls: Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich
Director: Joanna Mack
Country of origin and year: UK,1991
Channel 4
Examines the propaganda films made by the Nazis to justify the euthanasia policy of the 1930s and 1940s whereby over 200,000 people were killed on the grounds that they were mentally or physically disabled. The two most explicit of these films, which directly advocated the killing of disabled people, were destroyed by the Nazis as the war ended. Includes unedited footage that was previously thought lost and reconstructs films from scripts.

I'll Die When I Choose
BBC News (UK)—Sun, 14 Dec 2008, 20:30 hrs
Margo MacDonald, the firebrand, independent politician, is one of Scotland's most popular public figures. But she also has Parkinson's Disease. Now, in this deeply personal film, she uncovers the truth about assisted dying, meeting those with illnesses like hers who are desperate to die, and exploring how British law could be changed to allow them to choose when they can. In a moving interview, her life-long friend and leader of Scotland's Catholics, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, tries to persuade Margo against taking her own life.

Panorama S58 E4: I Helped My Daughter Die
Director: Ray Tostevin
Country of origin and year: UK, 2010
Starring: Jeremy Vine, Kay Gilderdale, Debbie Purdy
What drives a mother to help her child die? For ten months, Panorama cameras followed Kay Gilderdale - at the centre of a controversial Assisted Suicide trial - facing a possible life sentence over the death of her daughter Lynn.
Internet Movie Database webpage: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598592/

Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich
1991
Selling Murder is the frightening, true story of how the concept of mass murder was sold to the German public as a merciful, necessary deliverance for the physically and mentally ill. Actual footage of doomed patients and naked, dead bodies in mass graves makes this terrible tragedy depressingly real. Looking into the innocent eyes of the victims and realizing their horrific fate is numbing.

Exit - The Right To Die
Director: Fernand Melgar
This documentary takes a closer look at the work of the Francophone group Exit, showing an annual meeting, secretaries answering phone queries, a conference of Exit societies in Japan, a board meeting and discussions with clients. But the main focus of the documentary is on the accompagnateurs, the escorts. They ensure that the client is making a free choice to commit suicide. They patiently reassure them as they slowly make up their minds. They provide the lethal barbiturates and witness the deaths. It is depicted as heart-rending, exhausting work.

The Fight To Die
Director: Nan Rosens
This documentary gives a quick history of the Dutch legalisation from the 1970s. For supporters of euthanasia, the film depicts the major figures in changing the law as bold and compassionate innovators. For opponents, it gives some insight into the characters and personalities of the leading figures in the movement.
http://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/documentary-chronicles-history-of-dutch-euthanasia-law/11962#sthash.wh6BQM1S.dpuf

Tomorrow Never Knows
Tomorrow Never Knows, tells the story of a transgender person with early onset Alzheimer's who decided to end his life through “voluntarily stopping eating and drinking” (VSED). The documentary focuses primarily on Shar’s final days as he lies dying in bed, surrounding by a veritable shrine of objects reflective of his alternative Buddhist spirituality. Shar’s partner Cynthia Vitale waits with as his breathing becomes more laboured.

Fatal Flaws
Director: Kevin Dunn
2019
A thought-provoking journey through Europe and North America to ask one of the most fundamental philosophical questions of our time: should we be giving doctors the right in law to end the life of others by euthanasia or assisted suicide? The filmmaker uses powerful testimonies and expert opinion from both sides of the issue to uncover how these highly disputed laws affect society over time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev8jTyIiJ3Q