You’d Rather Be Dead?

"You’d Rather Be Dead?" is a documentary about severely ill people as well as disabled persons and illustrates why life is worth living. For everyone. In her debut feature, Christina Seeland accompanies severely disabled people aged 35 to 55, some of which have already been living in a Hamburg institution for disabled people for years.

Christina Seeland, who is a trained theatre director, has been working as a carer for thirteen years and is regularly confronted with opinions such as: “50 percent of the disabled people living in care must prefer to be dead.” This is the question she addresses in her conversations, therapy sessions, excursions, and travels she undertakes with the protagonists of the film, and she experiences how diverse, interesting, and valuable life is for every single one of them. Alongside the six main characters, their relatives, friends, and the team of carers in the nursing home are introduced. This is a very special film about encounters with people one usually does not get to know so closely.

Fortune Cookie Filmproduction & C.Seeland in co-production with ZDF / Das Kleine Fernsehspiel.