Movie, Cinema, TV, Social encounters
LINSE Filmkunst und Gespräch: Ich sterbe. Kommst Du?
Thursday, 05/02/2026 / 05:00 PM - 06:39 PM / CinePlanet 5
I am dying. Will you come?
Film and film discussion
Drama (Germany 2025)
Age rating: FSK 12
Duration: approx. 99 min.
Following: Film discussion with Elke Hoffmann, Hospizverein Segeberg e.V. and Karsten Wendt, Hospiz Lebensweg, Bad Oldesloe
Directed by: Benjamin Kramme
with: Jennifer Sabel (Nadine) · Barbara Philipp (Renate) · Hildegard Schroedter (Marion) · Carlos Moselewski · Axel Werner
A woman suffering from terminal breast cancer moves into a hospice to spend her last days there. While her family – including her young son – increasingly withdraws from her, she experiences brief moments of comfort in encounters with caregivers and fellow residents. The film straightforwardly depicts the slow, inexorable process of dying, with all its social isolation and psychological challenges. At the same time, it captures the everyday life of a facility that works with great sensitivity. Despite a somewhat loose dramaturgy, it impresses with its precise gaze and approaches the enormity of one's own mortality in an unsentimental and authentic manner. - Worth seeing from age 14.
Long review:
Some former friends visit Nadine (Jennifer Sabel) in the hospice. They try hard to create a relaxed and carefree atmosphere. How much the occasion of their visit is repressed becomes evident when someone suddenly shouts "Get well soon" during a group selfie. Of course, Nadine will never recover, but will soon die due to her terminal breast cancer. This awareness only breaks through the seemingly nice gathering when one of the women suddenly bursts into tears.
Those in the midst of life prefer not to come too close to death and thus their own mortality. Nadine has to experience this firsthand in her circle of acquaintances. Particularly painful for her is the absence of her young son, who avoids her because her physical decline frightens him. The more desperately she pleads for him to come, the smaller the chance that he will show up.
The last station
During her last night in her apartment, Nadine spends it alone in almost complete darkness. Only the colorful light of a lamp brings a faint smile to her face. A moment that clearly illustrates her isolation, as Nadine has already in a sense left the sphere of the living. Pale, weakened, and with a close-cropped hairstyle from chemotherapy, she reaches her final station the next day. The light-filled hospice, surrounded by vast forests and fields in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, is a strangely transcendent place, somewhere between this world and the next. No one knows when the residents will truly die. Some even insistently convince themselves that everything will be alright again.
However, Nadine does not want to ease her pain with lies. This makes it not always easy for her or her surroundings. As soon as someone in the hospice treats her dreadful death as something mundane or even acceptable, she is overtaken by rage. Her insults can hit anyone; from the mother to the caregiver. Only over time does Nadine begin to understand that while she remains alone in the hospice, short conversations or silliness with fellow sufferers can indeed provide comfort for a moment. In the common room, they read each other horoscopes, celebrate Christmas in April, or indulge in black humor, while the caregivers try to strike the right tone but sometimes feel powerless.
The actor Benjamin Kramme does not romanticize the protagonist's previous life in his directorial debut "I am dying. Will you come?" into a carefree time abruptly ended by illness. Nadine comes from a feuding family that has become even more dysfunctional due to cancer. Her mother despises her just as much as the father of her child. During a meeting, he hisses at her, "Hopefully, you won't last much longer." For Nadine, dying increasingly means coming to terms with the wreckage of her life. The staging consistently brightens the bleak, fatalistic mood with humor and warmth. A shared cigarette or a sincere compliment from an ex-boyfriend can work wonders.
Whiplash of emotions
Nevertheless, the film attempts to largely avoid sentimentality. There is nothing that can save Nadine's life, and her death will not be a peaceful passing but a slow, nerve-wracking process. Lead actress and co-screenwriter Jennifer Sabel brilliantly embodies the conflicting emotions of her character: hostility, fear, and powerlessness, yet always the remnants of joy that flicker through. The director's perspective on the doomed figures and the institution that catches them feels authentic and multi-faceted – also thanks to the somewhat rough and unembellished aesthetics. The film aims less to tell a story but to describe a state. As a result, the narrative occasionally feels somewhat chaotic and spontaneous, often focused on individual moments. However, all of this fits well with the parallel world of a hospice, where a different sense of time prevails and everything is uncertain.
All statements without guarantee.
