Much Ado About Dying - Pride on the Big Screen

Winner - Award for Best Directing, International Feature Competition, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, 2022

When the filmmaker Simon Chambers receives a call from his elderly gay uncle—“I think I may be dying!”—he takes it as a summons. As it turns out, eccentric Uncle David, a retired actor living alone in a cluttered, mouse-infested London house, is being dramatic, sort of.

For the next five years, Chambers both cares for and documents him, through all his performative exuberance (constantly acting out passages of King Lear) and anarchic charisma (swinging from boisterous humor to short temper), as various people (including a sexy young hustler) possibly take advantage of him.

As their lives become encumbered by hospital visits, a house fire and Britain's inadequate elder care system, the younger man (also single and queer) reflects with aching honesty on what may await him in the years to come, in this moving yet hilarious film.

"Pulls off a remarkable feat: a story of an elderly man’s farewell that manages to be simultaneously touching, endearing and often riotously funny." - Matthew Carey, Deadline

"Joyous clarity…in this achingly funny-sad film." - Guy Lodge, Variety

"A thought-provoking study of what it means to live…a compelling, often humorous and unflinching portrait." - Nikki Baughan, Screen International

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Much Ado About Dying - Pride on the Big Screen

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