Costa-Gavras: "There should be the possibility of a dignified death while we are still healthy."

MadridDespite being in Madrid, Costa-Gavras (Loutra-Iraias, 1933) has not been alien to the dynamics of Sant Jordi during the promotion in Spain ofThe last breath (The last souffle (in the original version), his latest film about death with dignity, which premieres this Friday. The Greek film director – French by adoption – turns to his friend Jorge Semprún, who died in Paris in 2011, when choosing a literary recommendation. The novel The long journey It is the testimony of an era marked by totalitarianism, one of the great themes of the filmmaker's filmography, which he addressed in collaboration with the Spanish writer and politician in films such as Z (1969) or The confession (1970). "Semprún and I had started to think about a film about the Spanish Civil War. Unfortunately, he fell ill," he recalled this Wednesday.

At 92, Costa-Gavras is putting aside the isms to focus on the process individuals go through when bidding farewell to life. "I'm reaching an age where this event, the end, is getting closer and closer. I've seen many people pass away around me. Some in very good condition, leaving a good memory, and others in dramatic or execrable conditions, which leave a bad taste. Then I asked myself: 'How will it happen?' Semprún's death thwarted a film project that, without his friend, the director had no desire to undertake. In The last breath examines reactions to the imminence of death, with a particular focus on those who remain behind. Drawing on the experiences of a palliative care unit head, described in the book of the same name by Régis Debray and Claude Grange, which inspired him, Costa-Gavras presents a series of cases and argues that everyone should be able to die "in the best possible conditions."

While the film focuses on this "extraordinary place" where patients are constantly accompanied by professionals—the film was shot with real palliative care doctors and nurses—and loved ones until the very end, with the ability to decide what their farewell should be like, the farewell of the farewell, in the claim that this should be available to everyone. "In France, we would need a hundred times more places than there are," he points out. Costa-Gavras goes even further and defends the right to euthanasia: "We should have the possibility, while we are still healthy, to go to a place that offers us this end. This does not exist and one day it should. We have more and more elderly people who represent an economic and emotional burden for themselves and for others," he says.

The film director rejects nursing homes, which he doesn't see as a good solution but rather as a place to park people while they wait for them to die, stripped of that decision-making power. "It's very sad. It's a constant humiliation to be in a wheelchair and have someone feed you, shower you, and put you to bed. In an ideal society, one day we would be able to say: 'I'm leaving. I've lived. The future will get worse and worse. Goodbye,'" he maintains. This allegation contrasts with the avoidance reaction he sees in relation to the debate about death. "We don't address it, and we have to talk about the fact that there is an end to life. We categorically reject death," he argues. An example of this rejection is the resistance he encountered from producers and distributors when he proposed this film. "They told me that no one would come to see it," he explains, and clarifies that he has not conceived The last breath as a cinematic farewell: "I'm already thinking about another topic. I'll try, let's see if I can do it"

"The rearmament debate is tragic"

Costa-Gavras defends a dignified death as a necessary element of the welfare state in the midst of an escalating war, with the left warning of the risk of social cuts. "For my generation, the debate on rearmament is tragic and unbearable. The lessons of the past haven't worked," he laments, and denounces the drift of Putin, Trump, and Netanyahu. The filmmaker notes that it is a "complicated and difficult problem": "It will cost us dearly." However, he believes that, to help a country like Ukraine, "it is worth making some sacrifices." "We must accept that human folly will always be present and we must prepare young people to combat it," he asserts.