Statements and Comments
January 2025
Interview with Spanish film director Carlos Marques-Marcet about his film “Polvo serán» (“They Will Be Dust”)
“Polvo serán” is a fictional drama with musical elements. Parts of the film were shot in Switzerland, including at DIGNITAS .
The film premiered in September 2024 at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Platform Award. It has toured various other festivals and won other awards/mentions since. “Polvo serán” was released in Spanish cinemas in November 2024.
The story: 70-year-old Claudia gets diagnosed with a terminal illness and decides to end her life through an assisted suicide. The film shows Claudia’s emotional journey surrounding her decision as well as the complex family and relationship dynamics and ways of coping with the situation. Claudia’s husband of 40 years, Flavio, cannot imagine life without her and decides to travel with her to Switzerland. Their daughter Violeta becomes a mediator between the two while trying to clarify her own thoughts.
In an interview with DIGNITAS, Carlos Marques-Marcet provides fascinating insights into the making of the film and his personal and artistic exploration of self-determined dying.
DIGNITAS: What brought you to address the topic of a self-determined end of life in a family context?
Carlos Marques-Marcet: I’ve thought a lot about death in general since I was a kid: it has actually helped me to be a very life-affirming person. The story itself started when a family – close friends of mine and actors with whom I had worked before – explained to me that they were members of one of the associations in Switzerland, and that the older couple wished to end their lives together if one of them got seriously ill. This blew my mind, and I proposed to them more than five years ago to do a workshop to try to come up with a movie out of their intentions. At the end, they were not able to be part of the movie because of health issues, but I totally owe to them the heart of this movie.
DIGNITAS: The film weaves a family context that illustrates how ambivalent one’s own feelings can be when someone decides to end their own life in a self-determined manner. Many questions arise, old conflicts break out, frictions come to the surface, feelings such as anger, powerlessness and helplessness. Everyone has to come to terms with the reality of Claudia’s illness and her and Flavio’s decision, whether they want it to or not. How did you go about developing the scenes and dialogue?
Carlos Marques-Marcet: The most essential objective to me is to try to never judge any of the characters, to try to expose the conflicts without taking sides, to show different points of view. It is up to the audience to come up with a judgement on the question: “What would I do in this situation?”. The scenes themselves come from different sources: many of them are adaptations of transcriptions of the exercises and improvisations that we did during the devising workshop with the original family. Other scenes have their origin in the research and documentation phase I always do when preparing to write a script. I collect lots of materials from very different sources: talking to people, reading, watching documentaries, music, etc. The most difficult part of the process to me is collecting interesting scenes that go beyond plot points. I dislike plot points, I try instead to collect moments that reveal something about the people and the subjects I’m dealing with. Writing the dialogue to me then comes in a very straight forward way, the characters and the situation speak by themselves. It’s almost like doing an improvisation but playing all the roles yourself.
DIGNITAS: What was important to you in casting the roles, and how was it different to other film projects?
Carlos Marques-Marcet: As the project was conceived and planned with this one particular family, when they told me they wouldn’t be able to make the film, my first thought was to cancel it. I couldn’t conceive anybody else playing those roles. But then my producers pushed me to at least try to find other people for the roles. Angela Molina was then kind of a natural choice, as only an acting legend like her could embody what the character needed. And she IS larger than life. For the role of Flavio we needed a very smart actor, someone who can say it all just with a look, and Alfredo Castro is the master of “less-is-more”. I needed two actors that were opposite yet complimentary: Angela is pure fire and air, and Alfredo is always deeply connected to earth, to the ground. They complemented each other while at the same time pulling each other to unknown territories. Also, I needed actors who were brave enough to confront things that many people are not eager to dive into. Alfredo and Angela are fearless, and this is a weird quality in an actor, because by nature actors normally are quite insecure as a consequence of exposing themselves to others.
DIGNITAS: You attached great importance to filming at original locations such as the crematorium and the DIGNITAS house. Why was that important to you?
Carlos Marques-Marcet: As I grow older, I feel I trust less and less the notion of reality as something objective. However, cinema is the one art that has a unique quality to document people and places. To me this is the most important tension in filmmaking: the dreamy quality of moving images and its ability to document the world. Locations and casting are the most important choices I feel we have as filmmakers to convey feelings and thoughts. We had a clear idea that it was through music and dance that we would approach the “unspeakable” side of death, but to compensate we needed to document the process of assisted dying as truthfully as possible. We needed to transport the audience to the middle of it, let them experience a bit what it is like to be in those places immersed in that process. Shooting in the DIGNITAS house was for us the most important piece in creating this feeling in the audience. Even if people don’t know that it is the actual house, the camera captures something that feels very authentic. Also, to me filmmaking is all about bringing a bit of light into things that are absurdly hidden, unspoken, and that was also a reason to insist in real locations like the house or the crematorium. Once you shed light on these things, it is much easier to fight taboos.
DIGNITAS: An ambivalence remains throughout: will Flavio go through with ending his life together with Angela? Both options are understandable. Did you know from the beginning how the film would end?
Carlos Marques-Marcet: This is one of the questions we get the most in the q & a sessions with audiences after the screening. It is funny, because the ending and the beginning of the movie were the two things that were clear to me from the start. All that is between changed a lot. Even as we were shooting, working with Alfredo Castro on his scenes, we realized that we needed to make changes on the script to make his decision more complex. For Alfredo, being in the DIGNITAS house and meeting the DIGNITAS team was really transforming, and I tried to capture what the actor was experiencing and transfer it into the character.
DIGNITAS: Has your attitude towards assisted dying / assisted suicide changed in the course of your film project?
Carlos Marques-Marcet: It changed a lot! Now, when I hear somebody using the term “suicide tourism” I am ready to fight. I have become much more aware of the many false notions and ideas that the yellow press and the sensationalism have spread about assisted dying and I feel an almost personal duty to debunk them. Also, on a more personal level, a lot of ethical questions came up in the process, and, along with them, the realisation of how important it is that we talk and debate about assisted dying without taboos. To me, there are questions on two different levels, the sociopolitical and the existential one. I feel activism and organisations like DIGNITAS do an amazing job in the first realm, where it is not about whether assisted dying is an option you would choose for yourself, but about giving everyone the right to have access to it. On the other realm, we from the side of creativity and arts are suited to go into the existential and personal questions, not so much to find answers, but to ask ourselves more questions and more accurate ones. How do we want to die? How do we deal with the people left behind? What is the right equilibrium between personal choice and communal responsibility? What makes someone selfish in their decisions or in the acceptance/non-acceptance of other people’s choices?
DIGNITAS: How did the crew deal with this topic?
Carlos Marques-Marcet: One of the most beautiful things in making this film was to see how transformative it was in many ways for everyone involved. While we were preparing and shooting the movie, the mother of a crew member I worked with closely had a terminal cancer. At the beginning it was very hard for her to cope with her mother’s situation, but spending some time at DIGNITAS and meeting the team opened something in her. When we spoke again some months after the shooting, her mum had already passed away. She told me that she was happy because she had really been able to accompany her mother through the process, and she felt that the experience of letting her go, even if it was extremely hard, was one of the most beautiful things she had lived through.
Confronting oneself with assisted dying can bring us back to understand dying as a process we want to deal with and shape actively, that we want to live and not close our eyes to, and a process that can be full of love. The film’s choreographer Marcos Morau was almost unable to enter the crematorium to shoot the scene there, but after making the movie he did a dance show around the idea of Totentanz (“Dance of Death”), where he is exploring in-depth all his fears around it. It’s almost as if, when we start talking about death, we need to keep talking because it actually does us a lot of good.
DIGNITAS: Is assisted dying an option that you yourself may consider one day?
Carlos Marques-Marcet: Yes, but I don’t have a firm answer to it. I am very much in love with life and that makes it difficult for me to think that there will be a moment when I may decide I’ve had enough. To me life is addictive, hard to quit. But of course, I have been very lucky with my health and my life opportunities, and when health is lacking, all the rest may lose meaning. I am sure though that I prefer to confront death in full conscience, that I want to “live my death”.
26 June 2024
DIGNITAS: Founding an assisted dying society
In 1998, DIGNITAS – To live with dignity – To die with dignity was set up in Switzerland by lawyer Ludwig A. Minelli. It was one of the first end-of-life organisation in the world to help foreigners – non-Swiss citizens – to die. Since then around 4,000 people from 65 different countries have ended their lives with help from the group. Ludwig Minelli tells Jane Wilkinson why he believes freedom of choice is so important.
BBC World Service, “Witness History”
February 2024
New research: Understanding the perspectives of UK-based family members of people who have chosen to end their life by assisted dying
PhD thesis by Dr Megan Knights (nee Hitchcock)*
published October 2023
Background
The option to choose an assisted death, in certain circumstances, is growing in momentum around the world, but at the time of writing, assisted deaths are illegal in the UK. Therefore, those living in the UK wishing for an assisted death, must go abroad to Switzerland, the only country that offers these services to non-citizens, and use an end-of-life organisation such as “DIGNITAS – To live with dignity – To die with dignity”. In these circumstances, family members, aware of their loved ones’ plan, are required to choose to travel with them, facing possible investigation and prosecution on their return, or to leave their loved one to go to Switzerland alone. Family members, and others, who may have been excluded from the plans for an assisted death, may need to come to terms with their loved one choosing this way to die.
This study
Seeking to understand UK-family members’ perspectives on assisted deaths, Megan interviewed a small sample of family members about their views on assisted dying, the various contexts informing these views, and the resources that they drew on to support themselves during this time.
Summary of main findings
Full thesis
*Dr Megan Knights is a Clinical Psychologist who recently completed her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire (UH).
30 September 2023
Leeds Festival of Ideas LIFI23
Experienced universally but felt so uniquely, grief will find its way into our lives and affect us in ways sometimes impossible to articulate. Manifesting in all forms, shapes and sizes, why does grief often have the ability to get us a little tongue tied?
hosted by Dame Prue Leith
PROJECTING GRIEF Exhibition at LIFI23: We’re all going to go through grief. Let’s try to get better at talking about it.
22 September – 22 December 2021
Liam McArthur, Member of the Scottish Parliament, lodged a proposal for a Member’s Bill to enable competent adults who are terminally ill to be provided at their request with assistance to end their life: the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill. The public was invited to submit written comments on the proposed Member’s Bill. DIGNITAS wrote a submission (PDF) in support of the proposed Bill.
Consultation Document
Information about the Consultation by FATE – Friends At The End
15 December 2019
The Food and Health Bureau of the Government of Hong Kong invited the public to submit views on end-of-life care legislative proposals regarding advance directives and dying in place. DIGNITAS contributed to the consultation by sending in a submission (PDF).
Website with the Consultation Papers
5 August 2019
On 4 April 2019, the Parliament of South Australia established the Joint Committee on End of Life Choices. DIGNITAS – To live with dignity – To die with dignity contributed to the inquiry by sending the Committee a submission (PDF).
Website of the Parliament – Joint Committee on End of Life Choices
29 April 2019
Interview of DIGNITAS with the South Korean news broadcaster YTN
24 August 2018
The South Africa Parliament invited the public to submit written comments on a proposal for a bill on Advance Directives (Livings Will and Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare), a comment on the National Health Amendment Bill 2018, aiming at gaining legal recognition, legal clarity, and legal enforceability of Advance Directives. DIGNITAS submitted a letter (PDF) in support of the proposed legal recognition.
Government Gazette Notice 41789
27 February 2018
In New Zealand, MP David Seymour introduced the “End of Life Choice Bill” (Bill 269-1) which gives people with a terminal illness or a grievous and irremediable medical condition the option of requesting assisted dying. In response to the public inquiry by the Justice Committee of the Parliament of New Zealand, DIGNITAS – To live with dignity – To die with dignity handed in a submission (PDF). This complements DIGNITAS’ earlier submission in response to the investigation into ending one’s life in New Zealand based on the petition no. 2014/18 of Hon Maryan Street and 8,974 others.
Website of the New Zealand Parliament
June 2015 – February 2016
In New Zealand, the Health Select Committee of the Parliament has received a petition of Hon Maryan Street and 8,974 others requesting “That the House of Representatives investigate fully public attitudes towards the introduction of legislation which would permit medically-assisted dying in the event of a terminal illness or an irreversible condition which makes life unbearable.” An investigation into ending one’s life in New Zealand was undertaken and public submissions were called on this petition, no. 2014/18.
Submission by DIGNITAS – To live with dignity – To die with dignity (PDF)
28 April 2016
VI. Konference Neuropsychiatrického Fóra, Praha, Czechia
Interview by Vojtěch Berger Czech Radio Český rozhlas, Radiožurnál
Booklet to complement the speech of DIGNITAS (PDF)
Website of the Neuropsychiatrické Fórum
30 July 2015
Inquiry into End of Life Choices
Are Victorian laws adequately meeting people’s expectations regarding medical options available at the end of their life? The Legislative Council’s Legal and Social Issues Committee of the Parliament of Victoria, Australia, called for submission as it is interested in the community’s views, insights and experiences in relation to this issue, to inform its recommendations to the Parliament.
Website of the Parliament – Inquiry into End of Life Choices
Submission by DIGNITAS (PDF)
20 August 2014
In Australia, Federal Greens Senator and former GP Dr Richard Di Natale, has tabled an exposure draft for national dying with dignity – legislation in the Australian Senate. The Senate has passed a motion to have that Bill considered by a Senate Inquiry. The Inquiry has called for submissions from the public on the Bill. DIGNITAS has handed in a submission.
Exposure Draft (PDF)
Submission by DIGNITAS (PDF)
14 November 2013 / 6 June 2014
In Scotland, parliament member Margo MacDonald presented a revised proposal for an “Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill”, to make it lawful, in certain circumstances, to assist another to commit suicide; and for connected purposes. A Commitee called for written evidence. DIGNITAS has submitted a response.
Speech of Silvan Luley of DIGNITAS, at the press launch in Edinburgh: (PDF)
Campaign website
Response/submission (short version) by DIGNITAS (PDF)
Response/submission (full version) by DIGNITAS (PDF)
3 July 2012 / 20 November 2012
In England, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Choice at the End of Life, in partnership with Dignity in Dying, launched a draft Assisted Dying Bill for consultation. The draft Bill builds on the recommendations of the Commission on Assisted Dying, which published its findings in January 2012.
Based on its considerations for a proposal for an Assited Sucide (Scotland) Bill and the submission to the Commission on Assited Dying, DIGNITAS handed in a response (PDF) to the APPG.
23 January 2012 / 1 May 2012
In Scotland, parliament member Margo MacDonald lodged a proposal for a Bill, the “Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill”, to enable a competent adult with a terminal illness or condition to request assistance to end their own life, and to decriminalise certain actions taken by others to provide such assistance.
A consultation was held until 30 April 2012.
The proposed Bill includes elements of the practice of accompanied suicides in Switzerland as well as of the “Death with Dignity Act” of the US-State of Oregon.
Response/submission of DIGNITAS to the consultation (PDF)
5 May 2011 / 3 October 2011 / 5 January 2012
In England, Lord Falconer launched The Commission on Assisted Dying which – amongst other aims – shall investigate the circumstances under which it should be possible for people to be assisted to die. See their website www.commissiononassisteddying.co.uk. In answer to the Commission’s Call for evidence, DIGNITAS handed in a submission (PDF).
The submission by DIGNITAS is now online, on the website of the Commission, (No. 1012, Evidence from DIGNITAS), amongst many other submissions.
Upon the visit of two delegates of the Commission on Assisted Dying, DIGNITAS provided additional notes (PDF) to answer specific questions of the Commissioneers.
Final Report of the Commission on Assisted Dying
8 October 2011
“A human life – what’s it worth?”
Contribution of DIGNITAS at the Battle of Ideas Satellite Debate in Zürich, 8 October 2011 (PDF)
3 February 2005
28 August 2004