Do Not Resuscitate

Australia 2006 / 98min. R Content may disturb
Director Davor Dirlic / Producer Lizzette Atkins

Radio jock Steve Guest announced on talkback radio that he was dying of cancer. He feared a drawn out, painful and unpleasant death and lamented the illegal status of euthanasia in Australia. Eloquent, forceful and dignified, he sparked furious debate about it.

Mary Walsh, a 63-year-old grandmother, has a 10 percent chance of surviving ovarian cancer. Judy Bayliss suffers greatly from 30 years of multiple sclerosis and has attempted suicide to escape the sentence of indignity and suffering laid down by the disease.

They all want to choose how and when they die. This film is a profound and a moving exploration of how they and their families deal with the stark reality of euthanasia and suicide. The film follows Mary to Mexico to obtain an illegal and banned poison to use on herself when she is ready to die and Judy in search of stem cell therapy in China. Audiences are cautioned that the film intimately documents Steve injecting himself with the lethal poison and dying on camera on his own terms.

This is an intimate journey — a confessional that will cause us to confront and come to terms with our fear of mortality. You won’t be the same after watching this film.

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