Faces of Death

Faces of Death (1978) is an American shockumentary directed by John Alan Schwartz — stream it online on iFILM. Over 105 minutes, the film stitches together archival footage, war newsreels, autopsy sequences and staged reconstructions into a deliberately disorienting portrait of mortality.

Dr. Francis Gröss serves as guide through scenes of violent death, accidents and the clinical routines of those whose job is to deal with corpses. The question of what is real and what is re-enacted is never fully answered — and that ambiguity is exactly the point. Released in 1978, it was banned in several countries and circulated for years as forbidden contraband.

Faces of Death sits at the founding edge of the shockumentary genre. It is less a film than a provocation that still generates argument about representation, ethics and the camera's relationship to death. Watch Faces of Death (1978) online on iFILM.