Intensive Life Unit

Doctors Ondřej and Kateřina look after their patients to the best of their ability, but they can’t prevent their death. Nevertheless, the inevitability of the end isn’t the hardest thing they have to face as heads of palliative care at Prague’s General University Hospital. A pilot project has emerged at a time when countless options are available to prolong human life; death is a social taboo and everyone has to confront his own mortality. Aware that a classic profile of the hospital would fall short, Adéla Komrzý submits a profoundly humanistic meditation on the ethics of palliative care. Betraying her special brand of empathy, she documents intimate conversations between doctors and their patients which demonstrate that, while there’s no good or bad way to die, there’s always a means to improve patients’ quality of life. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)