Winner of Best Picture at the 2024 German Film Awards, this outstanding examination of a toxic family deals deftly with heavy subjects like terminal illness, suicide, addiction and abortion without ever getting bogged down in the bleakness. Over three illuminating hours, writer/director Matthias Glasner tucks into a smorgasbord of human struggles in frank, often darkly funny fashion. Divided into five chapters plus an epilogue, Dying follows four members of the estranged Lunies family, both in their separate strife and showing how their lives occasionally, and unhappily, intersect.

Lars Eidinger plays Tom, a conductor working with a youth orchestra on a piece called ‘Dying’, composed by his suicidal friend Bernard (Robert Gwisdek). Tom has a complicated relationship with his ex, Liv (Anna Bederke), whose child he is helping to raise, much to the annoyance of the biological father. Lilith Stangenberg plays Tom’s sister Ellen, an alcoholic dental nurse who has become chaotically entangled with her married colleague Sebastian (Ronald Zehrfeld), while Corinna Harfouch and Hans-Uwe Bauer are the siblings’ neglected, terminally-ill parents Lissy and Gerd. 

The film has its share of horribly hilarious moments (some drunken dentistry, a car-crash of a concert) but the comedy is largely wry and emerges from the tragedy in a way that feels completely natural. Despite the subtlety of Glasner’s execution and coldness of some of his characters, there are some truly moving moments, enhanced by the work of a wonderful ensemble. By raking over the past, Dying recognises life’s knottiness, the damage we do to one another, and the lack of easy fixes; it views family as an inescapable burden and yet still manages to see the humour in it all and find hope for the future. Don’t let the epic runtime put you off, this is a film that justifies every second.

Dying is in cinemas from Friday 25 July.