Dying (2024 film) - Wikipedia
Dying (2024 film)
| Dying | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | Matthias Glasner |
| Written by | Matthias Glasner |
| Produced by | Jan Krüger Matthias Glasner Ulf Israel |
| Starring | Lars Eidinger Corinna Harfouch Lilith Stangenberg |
| Cinematography | Jakub Bejnarowicz |
| Edited by | Heike Gnida |
| Music by | Lorenz Dangel |
Production companies |
|
| Distributed by | Wild Bunch |
Release dates | |
Running time | 182 minutes[1] |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | GermanLatvian |
Dying (German: Sterben) is a 2024 German comedy drama film. It is about an elderly couple on the brink of death and their two children who are too concerned with their own troubles to get involved. The film premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival on 16 February 2024, and won Best Picture at the 2024 German Film Awards.
Synopsis
Dying follows the lives of an estranged family of four: Tom Lunies, a conductor in Berlin; his sister Ellen Lunies, an alcoholic dental assistant; and their elderly parents Lissy and Gerd. Lissy has many ailments and is only semi-mobile, while Gerd has dementia and tends to wander into other people's homes.[2][3] Tom, an emotionally cold character, is preparing to conduct an orchestral project called Dying (Sterben), composed by Bernard, his chronically depressed friend of twenty years.[3]
Cast
- Lars Eidinger as Tom Lunies
- Lilith Stangenberg as Ellen Lunies
- Corinna Harfouch as Lissy Lunies
- Hans-Uwe Bauer as Gerd Lunies
- Robert Gwisdek as Bernard
- Ronald Zehrfeld as Sebastian Vogel
- Saskia Rosendahl as Ronja
- Anna Bederke as Liv
- Saerom Park as Mi-Do
Production
The film was written and directed by Matthias Glasner, and co-produced by Glasner, Jan Krueger, and Ulf Israel. Cinematography was by Jakub Bejnarowicz, and the musical score was composed by Lorenz Dnagel. Heike Gnida edited the film.[4]
Dying has been described as black comedy.[5] It is divided into five different chapters over its three-hour length.[2]
Actor Lars Eidinger had to learn how to conduct an orchestra (as did Cate Blanchett for Tár), and he said that he modelled his performance on Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis.[3]
Release
The film had its world premiere on 16 February 2024 at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.[6][7]
It played at the Sydney Film Festival on 9 June 2024,[8] and also screened at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2024.[3]
Reception
100% of Dying's 21 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are positive. [9][10]
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave it 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "a black comedy of Franzenesque family dysfunction; maybe not profound exactly but terrifically watchable and entertaining".[5] The Hollywood Reporter called it "to die for", writing "Out of all the film’s many achievements, perhaps the most impressive is the ability to keep the tone balanced just on this biting point between tragedy and comedy in scene after scene".[4]
==Dying review: Dark family saga shows living, like dying, is a messy business
Sweeping intergenerational study of a fractured German family somehow finds a rhythm
Dying (Sterben): Matthias Glasner's compelling study of finality and decayTara Brady
Thu Jul 24 2025
Director:Matthias Glasner
Cert:16
Genre:Drama
Starring:Lars Eidinger, Corinna Harfouch, Lilith Stangenberg, Ronald Zehrfeld, Robert Gwisdek, Anna Bederke, Hans-Uwe Bauer, Saskia Rosendahl
Running Time:3 hrs 3 mins
Matthias Glasner’s Dying (or Sterben in the original German) is a film composed like its central musical motif: sprawling, discordant, haunted by mortality and strangely reminiscent of other works.
Spanning three hours and five loosely tethered chapters, this dark family saga plays like a collage of recent festival favourites; early, unvarnished scenes of elder care nod towards Vortex and Amour; a hectic middle section concerning a conductor recalls Todd Field’s similarly themed Tár; a late narrative swerve into assisted suicide intersects with Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door. Somehow, the disparate pieces and maximalist clutter find a rhythm.
Glasner’s sweeping intergenerational study lays bare the fractures within a German family. Lissy (Corinna Harfouch), an incontinent matriarch dying of cancer; her husband Gerd (Hans-Uwe Bauer), vanishing into dementia; their son Tom (Lars Eidinger), an enigmatic conductor rehearsing a choral piece titled – get it? – Dying; and Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg), their estranged, self-loathing daughter, who works as a dental assistant in the belief that it’s a job everybody hates.
She sings beautifully, but only when drunk. Her desperate affair with a married colleague marks her out from a clan composed of emotionally distant adults. Tom’s marked detachment is signalled by his bizarre domestic arrangements and the dispassionate abandonment of his depressed composer friend. His blank self-concern veers toward blackest comedy: imagine an episode of Peep Show directed by Michael Haneke.
There’s plenty to admire in the performances – Harfouch, Eidinger, and Stangenberg all deliver searing, bravura turns. The film’s obsession with finality makes room for bodily fluids of all varieties. Even the film’s hook-up scene – Ellen pulling a lover’s tooth before kissing his mouth – is bloody. Living, like dying, is a messy business.
The script’s wandering and overlapping arcs can feel uneven and tricksy, yet there’s something utterly compelling in how Glasner stages decay not just as a biological inevitability, but a doomy familial legacy.
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Tara Brady
Tara Brady, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a writer and film critic
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