Irish Film Institute, Dublin announces

  THIS MORTAL COIL 

An IFI Season

Exploring Death, Loss,

and the Meaning of Life

2 – 30 MAY 2026

 TICKETS ON SALE NOW: 
IFI.IE/THIS-MORTAL-COIL/

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16 April 2026: The Irish Film Institute (IFI), Dublin is proud to present This Mortal Coil, a new season of 13 films running throughout May. The season brings together a wide-ranging selection of international films that explore many facets of death and mortality. There are thematic pairings throughout, interspersed with some of cinema’s many contemplations of what, if anything, lies beyond this realm of existence.

While grief is deeply personal, it is also collective, reflected in rituals and storytelling traditions across cultures. This Mortal Coil embraces cinema’s unique ability to bring audiences together in contemplation of life’s most fundamental and final truth.

Drawing on philosophy, literature, religion and cinema, This Mortal Coil engages with death as a profound fact of life, across a spectrum of thinking from cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker’s assertion that “the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else” to Haruki Murakami’s cathartic insight that “death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.” 

Across this thoughtfully curated programme, audiences are invited to confront one of the few truly universal human experiences in the communal space of the cinema. From intimate personal stories to fantastical metaphysical explorations, the season examines how awareness of death shapes the way we live, love, and remember.

Commenting on the season, IFI Cinema Programmer Kevin Coyne said: 
“Through the millennia, death – its inevitability, the grief it brings, and whether it is a definite end to our existence – has fascinated artists and led to some of the most profoundly resonant and enduring of masterpieces. This season explores the ways in which the value and meaning of life and death are related in films that are challenging, thought-provoking, and, it is hoped, ultimately comforting.”

 

A Cinematic Exploration of Life’s Final Horizon

The season opens with two films which take confronting death as a catalyst for a more authentic relationship with the life that remains.

The first film is Akira Kurosawa’s profound meditation on legacy and purpose Ikiru (Saturday, May 2nd, 15.30), meaning “to live,” in which a terminal diagnosis compels a widowed bureaucrat to seek meaning in his final year through the creation of a new playground. 

In contrast, Isabel Coixet’s My Life Without Me (Sunday, May 3rd, 16.00) sees a clean-living 23-year-old mother (Sarah Polley) quietly reshape the lives she will leave behind after she receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. 

These two films complement each other by offering protagonists confronting the end at very different stages in their lives, with their own approaches to leaving a positive mark after they’re gone.

The programme moves from these grounded perspectives on mortality to the speculative and supernatural. Mbithi Masya’s Kati Kati (Wednesday, May 6th, 18.30) imagines a liminal afterlife where purgatory takes the form of a luxury resort where unresolved issues must be dealt with before time runs out. 

Later in the season, Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (Wednesday, May 13th, 18.20) offers a romantic and philosophical vision of existence beyond the mortal realm, where a highly organised life after death is presented in black and white in contrast with the lush technicolour of the world of the living.

 

Love, Ageing, and the Ethics of Dying

Questions of care, autonomy, and the end of life are brought into sharp focus in Michael Haneke’s Oscar-winning Amour (Saturday, May 9th, 15.30), a deeply affecting portrayal of ageing and devotion with the onset of dementia, and in Sławomir Fabiski’s Anxiety (Sunday, May 10th, 15.40), which examines the moral and emotional complexities of assisted dying. 

Anxiety will be preceded by Terence Davies’s short Death and Transfiguration, a lyrical meditation on mortality and memory, forming a very special double bill. The final chapter in his acclaimed 1983 debut trilogy of autobiographical shorts, the film sees Davies (who died in 2023) speculate on his own death.

Whether alone or surrounded by family, questions of agency around end-of-life decisions continue to be worthy of discussion and reflection.

 

Grief, Memory, and the Bonds That Endure

The season also addresses the experience of loss of the individual, versus that of the community, and the impact youth has in this context. 

Jacques Doillon’s Ponette (Saturday, May 16th, 16.10) presents a moving portrait of childhood grief through the eyes of a four-year-old girl who survives the car crash that kills her mother.

Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (Sunday, May 17th, 15.45) contrasts this with the incomprehensible grief of a rural community that loses 14 of its children in a school bus crash.

As with a number of films in this season, one of the primary themes here is how the living integrate their absent loved ones into their continuing lives.

 

Visions of the Afterlife

The season concludes with a series of films imagining what may lie beyond death.

Jean Cocteau’s Orphée  (Wednesday, May 20th, 18.30) reimagines the romance of Orpheus’s mythic descent into the Underworld through the ruined landscape of post-war Europe in this thematically complex and visually inventive fable.

In David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (Saturday, May 23rd, 16.20) and Lake Mungo (Sunday, May 24th, 16.30), grief takes on a spectral dimension, reflecting the enduring presence of those we have lost and the ways in which memory reshapes absence.

Concluding the season, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life (Wednesday, May 27th, 18.00) offers a quietly profound vision of a way-station between life and what lies after, where the recently deceased are housed and given a week to select their happiest memory to film and take with them as their sole memory on the other side.

 

A Shared Experience of the Inevitable

As the season suggests, while death awaits each of us as individuals, the shared experience of film may offer communal contemplation, acceptance, and solace.

To further this shared reflection, the IFI are delighted to be partnering with Seanchoíche on a storytelling night at the season’s close on the theme of Memories. The event will offer a communal, empathetic space in which people can come together to share their stories and experiences. It will provide a place to explore and talk through many of the subjects raised in the films within the season. This Mortal Coil: IFI & Seanchoíche – Memories will take place Saturday, May 30th at 18.00. Other events centred on the season’s themes will be announced soon. 

 

Further Reflections at the IFI

A number of IFI monthly strands will offer further reflections on the themes of the season this May. 

The IFI’s free Archive at Lunchtime series will take the theme of To Die For.

From The Vaults will see Pat Collins join us for a Q&A screening of his documentary on Ireland’s funeral culture Talking to the Dead (Thursday, May 13th, 18.30).

May’s Irish Focus screening will be The Swimming Diaries (Thursday, May 21st, 18.15), Susan Thomson’s adaptation of her memoir of the month of her mother’s death, with Thomson joining for a Q&A.

IFI Family will screen Coco (Sunday, May 24th, 11.00), Pixar’s magical tale of music, family, and legacy, inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead.

And finally, Wild Strawberries will present H is for Hawk (Wednesday, May 27th and Friday, May 29th, 11.00), an evocative and moving take on grief and the comfort of nature.

 

Season Schedule:

Ikiru – Sat, May 2nd (15.30)
My Life Without Me – Sun, May 3rd (16.00)
Kati Kati – Wed, May 6th (18.30)
Amour – Sat, May 9th (15.30)
Anxiety + Death & Transfiguration – Sun, May 10th (15.40)
A Matter of Life and Death – Wed, May 13th (18.20)
Ponette – Sat, May 16th (16.10)
The Sweet Hereafter – Sun, May 17th (15.45)
Orphée  – Wed, May 20th (18.30)
A Ghost Story – Sat, May 23rd (16.20)
Lake Mungo – Sun, May 24th (16.30)
After Life – Wed, May 27th (18.00)
This Mortal Coil: IFI & Seanchoíche – Memories – Sat, May 30th (18.00)

Amour is available to stream on IFI@Home as part of Complicit: The Films of Michael Haneke until Wednesday, July 1st.

 

Film Trailers:

Ikiru
My Life Without Me
Kati Kati
Amour
A Matter of Life and Death
Ponette
The Sweet Hereafter
Orphée
A Ghost Story
Lake Mungo
After Life

 

SEASON NOTES

Notes by Kevin Coyne. Expanded programme notes are available here.

IKIRU

Dir. Akira Kurosawa

Saturday, May 2nd (15.30)

Film Info: 143 mins, Japan, 1952, Digital, Black & White, Subtitled

In Ikiru, or ‘to live’, Kanji (Takashi Shimura) leads a life of quiet monotony. When he is given less than a year to live, he struggles to come to terms with the diagnosis, but is inspired by a coworker to make his final months mean something. Kurosawa’s superb film depicts the creation of a legacy, and serves as a reminder that it is the impact that we have on others for which we will ultimately be remembered.

 

MY LIFE WITHOUT ME

Dir. Isabel Coixet

Sunday, May 3rd (16.00)

Film Info: 106 mins, Spain-Canada, 2003, Digital. F-Rated. 15A.

Sarah Polley stars as young wife and mother Ann, given a few short months to live following a cancer diagnosis. Her youth makes her all the more keenly aware of what her imminent death will cost her, and she resolves to hide the truth from friends and family while filling her remaining time with new experiences. However, in the end it is the personal she prioritises, the happiness and wellbeing of those she will leave behind, making this her legacy.

 

KATI KATI

Dir. Mbithi Masya

Wednesday, May 6th (18.30)

Film Info: 75 mins, Kenya-Germany, 2016, Digital, Subtitled

Notions of worlds beyond this one have stimulated human imagination across time, leading to a dizzying variety of imaginings. In Kati Kati, Kaleche (Nyokabi Gethaiga) finds herself in a strange resort, with no idea as to how she got there. Her fellow residents inform her that she has died and that leaving is impossible. Adapting to this knowledge, Kaleche learns that what is keeping her there is an unresolved issue from her life with which she must come to terms. 

 

AMOUR

Dir. Michael Haneke

Saturday, May 9th (15.30)

Film Info: 127 mins, France-Germany-Austria, 2012, Digital, Subtitled. 12A.

Age brings with it an inevitable degree of physical and cognitive decline. The quiet routine of Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), both in their eighties, is upended when Anne has a stroke that is the first step in a precipitous decline. Through it all, the devoted Georges, her primary caregiver, is at her side, trying to manage the suffering of the beloved woman who is disappearing before his eyes in Haneke’s typically unflinching and ethically complex film. 

Amour is available to stream on IFI@Home as part of Complicit: The Films of Michael Haneke until Wednesday, July 1st.

 

ANXIETY

Dir. Sławomir Fabicki

Sunday, May 10th (15.40) | Screening Running Time: 122 mins

Film info: 96 mins, Poland-Germany-Switzerland, 2023, Digital, Subtitled

In an acclaimed trilogy of autobiographical short films, Terence Davies created an alter ego whose life the films followed, and speculated on the manner of his death. In Sławomir Fabiski’s Anxiety, Małgorzata (Magdalena Cielecka) and her sister Łucja (Marta Nieradkiewicz) are on a road trip at the end of which, the terminally ill Małgorzata will undergo an assisted suicide. Łucja tries to persuade her sister to hold on to life while Małgorzata remains determined to die on her own terms.

[Feature preceded by short film Death and Transfiguration. Dir. Terence Davies. 26 mins, UK, 1983, Digital, Black & White]

 

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

Dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Wednesday, May 13th (18.20)

Film Info: 104 mins, UK, 1946, Digital. G.

RAF pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) survives his death when the being sent to ferry him to the afterlife loses him in the English fog. Having spent his supposed last moments talking to radio operator June (Kim Hunter), they now meet in person and fall in love. However, Peter is soon summoned to the Other World to accept his fate, which he appeals with the help of his friend and man of science Frank (Roger Livesey) in this magical film. 

 

PONETTE

Dir. Jacques Doillon

Saturday, May 16th (16.10)

Film Info: 97 mins, France, 1996, Digital, Subtitled

Germaine de Staël opined that “we understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.” Ponette (the remarkable Victoire Thivisol) is a four-year-old girl who survives the car crash that kills her mother and must come to understand her absence from her life. With her aunt offering solace in the form of religious beliefs, Ponette adapts these to her own way of thinking, wanting nothing more than just to see her mother again. 

THE SWEET HEREAFTER

Dir. Atom Egoyan

Sunday, May 17th (15.45)

Film Info: 112 mins, Canada, 1997, 35mm. 15A.

The incomprehensible grief suffered in The Sweet Hereafter is that of a community that loses 14 of its children in a school bus crash. Their pain and desire to see someone held accountable leaves them easy prey for lawyer Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm). The strength of Atom Egoyan’s film is in this interplay between the individual and communal loss. In their own ways, these adults are struggling just as much as Ponette to impose order and meaning on their tragedies. 

 

ORPHÉE

Dir. Jean Cocteau

Wednesday, May 20th (18.30)

Film Info: 95 mins, France, 1950, Digital, Black & White, Subtitled

The idea of being able to visit or rescue a loved one from beyond is an appealing one, especially to the recently bereaved, and has often been explored in fiction. Here, Jean Cocteau transposes the Greek myth of Orpheus to 1950s Paris. Orphée (Jean Marais) is transported by a mysterious Princess (María Casares), an avatar of Death, to the Underworld. Returning to the realm of the living, he ignores his wife Eurydice (Marie Déa) in favour of the alluring Princess.

 

A GHOST STORY

Dir. David Lowery

Saturday, May 23rd (16.20)

Film Info: 92 mins, USA, 2017, Digital. 12A.

In David Lowery’s poetic meditation on love, loss, and the connection that endures, M (Rooney Mara) is widowed when C (Casey Affleck) is killed in a car crash. She goes through a long, painful grieving process before leaving the house they shared for a new beginning. Unbeknownst to her, M, now a ghost and clad in the classic sheet outfit, has been silently observing all this, unable to communicate with her or offer comfort. When she leaves, M lets her go, staying behind and trying over the following decades to retrieve a note she hid just before her departure.

 

LAKE MUNGO

Dir. Joel Anderson

Sunday, May 24th (16.30)

Film Info: 87 mins, Australia, 2008, Digital

While A Ghost Story focused on a romantic relationship, Lake Mungo looks at the love that endures following the loss of a family member. After 16-year-old Alice (Talia Zucker) drowns, a series of unexplained phenomena in the family home leads them to believe that Alice may still be alive. For them, something essential has been lost, and the memory of Alice is reshaped as new facts come to light, their loss a live thing that deepens rather than finds accommodation.

 

AFTER LIFE

Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda

Wednesday, May 27th (18.00)

Film Info: 119 mins, Japan, 1998, Digital, Subtitled

In Hirokazu Kore-eda’s humane film, a way-station between life and what lies after houses the recently deceased while they are given a week to select their happiest memory, the sole memory they bring forward with them into eternity. Kore-eda’s film, an idiosyncratic spin on memory and loss, suggests that much can be discarded in order to focus on what is worth cherishing, and that it is this that gives our deaths as well as our lives their value and meaning.

 

THIS MORTAL COIL: IFI & SEANCHOÍCHE – MEMORIES
Saturday, May 30th (18.00)
Duration: 2 hrs

At the conclusion of this season, the IFI is delighted to announce our first official collaboration with Seanchoíche, the Irish storytelling platform that in just a few short years has become a global phenomenon. 

As always, the event will offer a communal, empathetic space in which people can come together to share their stories and experiences. The topic for the evening will be ‘Memories’. While the theme will hopefully provide a starting point to explore many of the subjects raised by the films in This Mortal Coil, it is of course open to the interpretation of the speaker.  

We look forward to partnering with Seanchoíche on an event that will invite those present to support and take solace from each other, and an evening that we hope will resonate long after it ends.

 

NOW BOOKING

Book now for cinema screenings via https://ifi.ie/this-mortal-coil/ or via IFI Box Office in-person or over the phone via 01 679 5744.

Season bundles are available for IFI Members only:

These packages can only be booked by IFI Members in-person or by calling the IFI Box Office on 01 679 5744. Season bundles do not include This Mortal Coil: IFI & Seanchoíche – Memories. See https://ifi.ie/support for full details on IFI Membership and to sign up.

The films in this season are available for 25 & Under cardholder pricing. Sign-up is free for the 25 & Under card for those aged 16-25. See https://ifi.ie/25under for full details.

Tickets for This Mortal Coil: IFI & Seanchoíche – Memories are €20, without Member/Non-Member pricing tiers, and are not eligible for season bundles or for 25 & Under cardholder pricing.

 

SUPPORT

We’re delighted to be partnering with Seanchoíche on This Mortal Coil: IFI & Seanchoíche – Memories.

The IFI acknowledges the support of the Arts Council. 

 

 

About the IFI

The Irish Film Institute (IFI) is Ireland’s national cultural institution for film. It provides audiences throughout Ireland with access to the finest independent, Irish and international cinema, including online via its streaming platform IFI@Home; it preserves and promotes Ireland’s moving image heritage through the IFI Irish Film Archive, and provides opportunities for audiences of all ages and backgrounds to learn and critically engage with film. As the only cinema with a 70mm projector, the IFI is the home of film in Ireland with a commitment to analogue exhibition.

 

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