Author: Anna Gawlita

Isabella Flore is 91 years old and has an explosive temperament. She is a deeply religious catholic and a fortune teller. She is also the only inhabitant of a Sardinian village next to what was once the world’s largest river dam. Today, the dam is in danger of collapse and the village stands abandoned. 

Isabella is often visited by people who look for her prophecies. But whoever arrives expecting a quiet old lady blinks their eyes in astonishment. She is despotic, loses patience easily and has a bawdy sense of humor. 

But despite her strong character, she grows weaker. When the guests leave, she puts on her oxygen mask and breathes heavily. Isabella has one dream. Before she dies, she wants to renovate the abandoned village. 

She crosses out successive lottery tickets and writes letters to the authorities asking them for action. There is not much time left. According to her own prediction, she will die in 2 years. She does everything to save the memory of the village and of herself.

The film „You have to go, the others stay” is to be centered on death, loss and the need for inventing new traditions to help overcome grief. It will feature a group of people, whose personal experience will serve as a point of departure for describing the world of lack after the death of a loved one.
At the basic level, the film will feature meetings, so called dinners of death. This initiative brings together strangers who all experienced loss, discussing the topic of death at the dinner table. Free of social convention, their conversations are full of grief, anger and laughter, giving a new perspective on bereavement. Our guides in this world will be Anja Franczak, the only licensed death doula in Poland.

On a deeper level the film conveys the need for constructing new funerary traditions, as the previous ones have proven dated and ineffective. I would like to show these new rituals as psychological tools that the protagonists use to survive the loss of a loved one. The structure and narrative are intended to follow the group process, without resorting to interviews.
On a third level the film aims to show the burial ceremony as a ritual that requires transformation.
Our guide in the world of funerary rites will be Jan Möller, founder of the Center for Funerary Culture and Education in Berlin, a pioneer in discourse of death.

I wish to create a multi-faceted film portraying the process of reclaiming the subject of death in modern culture.