Showing rarely documented, intensely private moments, Island follows four people with terminal illnesses during their last days. Shot in a care home on the Isle of Wight, we get to know Alan - a former London bus depot manager, Roy - a university librarian, Mary - a woman managing late stage cancer and Jamie, a 40-year old lorry driver trying to preserve his normal existence of 'booze and banter'.
Sensitive and tender yet thought provoking, Island issues a challenge to on-screen representations of death and its status as a taboo subject in society. It presents it as natural and everyday as well as unexplainable and bewildering.
Presented by Wavelength
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Twitter: @wavelengthdocs
dir. Steven Eastwood
year: 2017
country: UK
run-time: 90 minutes
Doors 18:45
Film 19:15
£6.00 (£4.50 conc.)
“Probes unchartered territory with great intelligence... a documentary that sensitively, empathetically, and concentratedly examines what it means to face the reality of mortality”
“An extraordinarily honest, unblinking, ruthlessly unsentimental look at the process of death... hauntingly evocative ★★★★”
“A memento mori in a pretty direct form ★★★★★ ”
“Disarmingly intimate, poetic and haunting”
“Dignified and poetic”
“Heartrending”