Peaceful

Peaceful (De son vivant, 2021) is a French drama from director Emmanuelle Bercot, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Benjamin teaches acting and coaches students toward the conservatory until doctors hand him a diagnosis there is no recovering from.

He gets one year — four seasons — to make peace with the impossible. Benoît Magimel plays a man who denies the illness before slowly learning to live inside the time he has left. Catherine Deneuve is his mother, undone and out of words. Between them stands an oncologist played by Gabriel Sara, an actual New York cancer doctor whose real practice makes the hospital scenes land with unsettling honesty. A devoted nurse rounds out the small circle holding everyone up.

Bercot isn't filming death so much as the work of staying alive to the last day, and she does it without easy tears or false comfort. It's a quiet, grown-up film for viewers ready for a hard conversation, and a rare chance to watch Deneuve and Magimel share the frame. Stream Peaceful online on iFILM.