Dick Johnson Is Dead

Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020) is a documentary by Kirsten Johnson you can watch online on iFILM. A cinematographer by trade, she turns the lens on her own dad — Dick, an 86-year-old psychiatrist slipping into dementia.

Unwilling to just wait for the end, father and daughter cook up a strange ritual: they stage his death over and over. An air conditioner drops on him, he tumbles down a staircase, a car clips him in the street — all faked, with stunt doubles and fountains of corn-syrup blood. Between takes they share meals, fading memories, and a full dress rehearsal of his own funeral, which he cheerfully attends.

The film took an editing prize at Sundance before landing on Netflix, and critics called it one of the most honest things ever made about dying. It isn't grim. It's a daughter teaching herself to grieve while there's still time to laugh. Stream Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020) online on iFILM.