Veronika Decides to Die

Veronika Decides to Die (2009) is a dramatic adaptation of Paulo Coelho's 1998 novel — watch it online on iFILM. Veronika survives a suicide attempt and wakes up in a private psychiatric clinic. The news that greets her: her heart sustained damage, and she has weeks to live.

Director Emily Young uses that setup to flip the premise on its head. Given a countdown, Veronika — played by Sarah Michelle Gellar — stops performing sanity and starts living by her own rules for the first time. The clinic becomes less a place of confinement and more a space where the usual social scripts don't apply. David Thewlis plays the unorthodox psychiatrist guiding her unconventional treatment; Jonathan Tucker plays a fellow patient whose connection with Veronika couldn't exist outside those walls.

Coelho's novel sold across six dozen countries on the strength of one uncomfortable question: why choose death when life seems fine, and why choose life when it's broken? The film doesn't flinch from it. Stream Veronika Decides to Die (2009) online on iFILM.