“Dear Seryozha, I wasn't invited to your funeral, and my last image of you is the photo at the mortuary. I didn't recognize your face. It was all smashed up after falling eleven storeys. I've thought about your suicide every day. I've thought about mine too. Death has become a part of me. That's why I came to work in this place, where nobody forgets the dead,” Lera Latypova says placidly. The “place”—fantastical and kitschy—she is referring to is the Novosibirisk crematorium in Russia, where Latypova was hired to make a funeral channel for television. Between an expeditious cremation and a procession of the 20th century’s best grieving outfits, Latypova signs her “life contract”, the staging of her last days, in good spirits. For the living and the dead, Film me! is above all a meeting place, where documentary staging meets its mortuary equivalent and where a mischievous filmmaker, an observant mother, an insistent daughter and an endearing mourner plays with everything, even death.

Professor at the Media School, UQAM
Co-director of the journal Frontières