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Storyville

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Storyville

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1997

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Documentary

Summary

BBC documentary strand featuring contemporary one-off films from around the world that cover a wide range of genres and subjects and have compelling narratives and character-based stories.

André Is an Idiot

Summary

A terminal diagnosis sends André Ricciardi on an unexpected journey - learning how to die happily without losing his sense of self. He confronts his mortality head-on, asking difficult questions with wit and honesty. His refusal to surrender, even in the face of death, results in a life-affirming exploration of what it means to live well until the very end

Review

David Butcher

Here’s another deep, thought- provoking Storyville film – and it’s funny too. André Ricciardi is a San Francisco adman, but he has the wild, wisecracking energy of a stand-up comic. At the start, he tells a hilarious story about a dumb thing he did as a teenager, the point being that it wasn’t nearly as dumb as not getting a colonoscopy in his 50s, only to be later diagnosed with stage four cancer.

André finds the humour in this, as in everything. “I prepared for chemotherapy by making sure I had hangovers for a good 35 years of my life,” he jokes at one point. We follow his treatment and slow decline over three years, and the result is the funniest film about dying you’re likely to see.