Assisted Dying in Contemporary Documentary Film

To coincide with the premiere of the Swiss documentary film Röbi geht (2023), Anna Elsner is in conversation with film directors Christian Labhart and Heidi Schmid, palliative care professor Andrea Kobleder and politician Monika Stocker in screenings across Switzerland (Arthouse Le Paris Zurich, Kinok St Gallen, Cinema Staziun Lavin).

In Röbi geht (2023), a small film crew accompanies Robert Widmer Demuth - a Swiss social worker - and his wife Heidi, during the last six months of his life after a terminal diagnosis. Röbi geht offers an unflinching look at how Röbi’s own experience of working with marginalized communities, as part of which he accompanied many deaths, has shaped his own perspective on death, dying and medicine’s role within it. As Röbi’s suffering becomes unbearable, he chooses to die an assisted death.