Jackie the Wolf, 2019 to 2022

My mother wanted to die on her own terms. She spent years fighting to make assisted suicide legal in France. She was vice-president of the right-to-die society, ADMD, and she was good at it. The day she resigned, she announced she had set a date for her own death. The interview went viral. More than nineteen million people watched it on Facebook.

For four years I made a film about her. About me. About us. I wanted to understand why she wished to die. I also wanted her to listen to me. We talked about everything: death, aging, money, sex. She spoke without a filter. She could be provocative. She was lucid and sharp. Some people were charmed. Others were shocked.

The filming was a kind of therapy for both of us. When the camera rolled, she had my full attention, and I had hers. It gave us a frame. Inside it, we could say hard things.

She rented her apartment, so after she died we had to empty it. When everything was gone, I stayed a whole day. I watched the light move across the empty rooms. Not long ago they had smelled like her, filled with her music and her photographs. Now it was nothing. A space waiting for the next tenant.

She was cremated at Père-Lachaise. No ceremony. No flowers. A plain wooden casket, the way she wanted. The man in the room played baroque music. I asked him to change it for "Enjoy Yourself, It's Later Than You Think," a song she loved.

Then the casket went into the furnace. We walked out. I looked up and saw smoke rising from the chimney. Was that my mother? Going up in smoke? It was unreal. Without thinking, I took a photograph. Maybe to protect myself from the pain.

Watch the trailer →