At Wednesday, 15.11.17, shows the WDR at 23:25 the cinema documentary THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACES TO DIE ("Nice Places to Die") as a TV premiere.
Nice Places to Die - Filmmaker Bernd Schaarmann traveled around the world with the question of where it is best to live and die. He visited parties in cemeteries, found beds on graves and met people who deal with death in a surprisingly positive way.
The result of this journey around the world is a film full of warmth that shows what unites people in the face of death: life!
Death and its meaning
Every person needs a place where they feel at home. What if that place is the cemetery? "Die schönsten Plätze zum Sterben" (Nice Places To Die) accompanies people in their up-close contact with corpses and skeletons. For these people, death is part of life in a very natural and everyday way - whether voluntarily, for traditional or economic reasons.
The film shows people on three continents who live in cemeteries or even temporarily house their dead in their homes.
What happens to these people? Are they different from us or do they resemble us? Could we live next to dead people if we had to? For example, does up-close contact with the dead and living in a cemetery foster a sense of human community and social togetherness?
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACES TO DIE is in documentary film by Bernd Schaarmann and Heike Fink, editorial office Jutta Krug (WDR).
The film is a Coolfilms production in coproduction with MMC Movies Cologne and with transmitter participation from WDR and Arte, supported by the Film and Media Foundation NRW and the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF).
Bernd Schaarmann
The topics of dying and death were not new to filmmaker Bernd Schaarmann. They accompanied him from the very beginning. As a director, he dedicated "Living and Dying in Castrop-Rauxel" to his parents, a loving portrait. They were morticians in the province. In this documentary, too, he focuses on the - often tragicomic - moments in dealing with death. His documentary shows that in the face of death one can often feel life in a completely new way.
The filmmaker himself died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 46 - shortly after completing his last film.
More information to THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACES TO DIE: wdr.de
Photo: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACES TO DIE © WDR/Bernd Schaarmann
