Before What Comes After

Costa-Gavras's 2024 film is built on conversations between a palliative care doctor and a well-known writer. Doctor Augustin Masset takes the writer Fabrice Toussaint into the hospital and shows him dying people, their families and the care team. The film is adapted from a book by Regis Debray and Claude Grange about accompanying the end of life. The narrative follows no plot; the sections consist of separate patient stories and the doctor is what connects them. The question at the centre is how much say a person can have over the manner of their death. Costa-Gavras takes no firm position, opening both the limits of medical intervention and the patients' own decisions to argument. Denis Podalydes and Kad Merad play the pair, with Charlotte Rampling also in the cast. Who it's for: those who like films of philosophical dialogue and Costa-Gavras. Who it's not for: viewers who do not want to approach death and terminal illness; the film stays there throughout.