“You know, I feel as if I’ve known this place since I was born. A home. I say that this is a place of life. Everything here is alive. Even death is alive...” The final stop for terminal patients beyond the reach of medical treatment, a hospice provides palliative care to patients determined to die with dignity. Filmmaker Ilan Yagoda takes us inside the stories playing out at an Israeli hospice, where the average stay is a modest 14 days. Alternately inspiring and heartbreaking, this poignant verité-style doc carefully follows six families as they attempt to say goodbye to their loved ones. The stories are personal, but common: a man who believes he was struck ill as punishment for leaving a fallen comrade on the battlefield; a woman who realizes she has walked through a loveless life; a son struggling to let go of his father. Yagoda eschews interviews and voice-overs, but his portraits are still intimate, candid and deeply familiar. In Grace, we find that the search for solace and the yearning for reconciliation can be quiet, beautiful, haunting and common to us all.
Awards
- The Editing Award - DocAviv International Film Festival, Israel, 2005
Festivals
- Big Sky International Film Festival, Montana, USA, 2007
- Mini Input Conference, Brazil, 2006
- Input International Annual Screening Conference – Taipei, Taiwan, 2006
- Visions Du Reel International Film Festival, Nyon, Switzerland, 2006
Additional info
Gallery
“Hessed” directed by Ilan Yagoda, is a film about the coexistence of life and death. An extremely sensitive portrait of dying people and their families. The characters are very moving and touching. A refined and crystallized cinematography…”
Christine Bloch, Programmer’s Choice – Nyon International Film Festival, April, 2006"Particularly recommended is Ilan Yagoda's "Grace", a film which chooses to spend 14 days on the company of those living out their final days in a Tel HaShomer hospice. The result is a stylish, soulful piece, which succeeds in impressing upon the audience the grace of forgiveness. There is no present reality in this film, but it nevertheless is deeply relevant. This is not a statement on the here and now, more a statement on several eternal questions."
Time Out, 1.4.05"Through the lens of the camera of Director Ilan Yagoda, the final 14 days of Cancer Patients appear to be continuously filled. Humor, Love, Soul-searching and preparing to say goodbye are all part of the life in the Hospice … Yagoda brings 78 minutes of love, pity, and an instruction on how to say goodbye. Yagoda shows that the House of Death is not how you imagined: It is surprisingly full of life. This is a spine-tingling film about separation and soul-searching…"
Hana Kleiman, "Tzomet HaSharon" 6.4.05“Every Documentary Film re-awakens the question of survival, as they deal with real people whose lives are exposed in an irreversible manner. "Grace" is made with an exaggerated modestly, saving the viewer from the embarrassment of watching the pornography of suffering. Yagoda and his cinematographer Danny Barnea have made an aesthetic and courageous choice in filming the patients and their families from a substantial distance, and have created a visual language not typical of Documentary Cinema, full of expressive close-ups. The film stubbornly avoids sliding into the tormented face of sickness, rather dealing with the issue with sensitivity; and succeeds in creating identification in spite of the remoteness, perhaps even because of it. “
Time Out, 7.4.05