I Am Breathing

Thirty-three-year-old Yorkshireman Neil Platt has Motor Neuron Disease. He is paralyzed from the neck down and has only months to live, so he tries to think up an appropriate way of saying goodbye to his one-year-old son Oscar. He uses voice recognition software to make candid, humorous observations by means of his blog. But what should he tell his son? What sense can he make of life? And what sense has his life made up until now? Unable to leave his bed or chair, covered by a mound of blankets and with a vacuum cleaner-like tube in his nose to help him breathe, he entrusts his thoughts and at times tragicomic everyday concerns to the camera: the irony of having to arrange your own funeral or cancel a phone contract - the latter of which turns out to be quite challenging. Much more heartbreaking is his fear of unbearable suffering. The extreme close-ups, the camera position (often filming from Platt's point of view), and the eternal drone of the ventilator, which constantly drowns out all the other sounds, quite literally suck the viewer into Platt's world. This film is incredibly personal yet universal, with an end that is tragically inevitable.