Few subjects are as emotionally fraught or politically charged as the right to die. Yet in GREEN LIGHT, director Pavel Cuzuioc approaches this terrain not with controversy, but with a clear-eyed compassion.

Premiering in the Semaine de la Critique section at the Locarno Film Festival, the film shows the life and work of Dr. Johann Spittler, a German neuropsychiatrist who has spent over two decades assessing, and in many cases accompanying, people seeking assisted death. His role is not to convince, condemn, or comfort, but to assess, with immense care, whether someone is of sound mind to make the most irreversible of decisions. In doing so, Spittler becomes a rare kind of witness: one who listens to the truths, hears the most private despair, and still offers presence, not panic.

Cuzuioc’s camera never intrudes. Instead, it sits with Spittler in quiet offices, over slow conversations, in the long pauses where doubt lives. There are no dramatics here no sweeping judgments.

And that is where the heartbreak lies.

GREEN LIGHT takes us into rooms where final decisions are made, not in panic or crisis, but with the heavy silence of acceptance. Patients describe pain that cannot be seen on scans, isolation, no medicine touches, or the slow theft of self by incurable illness. Some are dying physically. Others, mentally. Some are very old. Others are younger than we expect. Cuzuioc raises a question, “Are we brave enough to see death not only as an ending, but as a form of agency — one that, in certain cases, offers peace rather than tragedy?“

In societies that view death either as taboo or as a medical failure, assisted dying remains a flashpoint. And yet, GREEN LIGHT never preaches. It listens. In the sterile language of politics and headlines, we speak of “assisted suicide.” But this film asks us to reconsider the term itself. When someone suffers relentlessly, physically or psychologically, and when all treatments have failed, is their choice to end that suffering truly suicide? Or is it, in some cases, an act of reclamation?

What makes the film so affecting is that it never answers this for us. Instead, it shows us Dr. Spittler – a man who has approved over 700 such requests, who has sat beside hundreds in their final moments, and who continues this work with a calm dignity that feels increasingly rare. We sense the toll it takes. The solitude. The weight. And yet also the grace, because what he offers is not death, but the validation that someone’s suffering matters, that their story is heard, even at the end.

GREEN LIGHT is not an easy watch, nor should it be. But it is an important one. At a time when debates around assisted dying grow louder and more politicised, Cuzuioc has done something humane: he has quieted the noise and turned our attention to the intimate, fragile moments that define a person’s final chapter. And in doing so, he reminds us of something vital: that choosing peace is not weakness; that witnessing suffering without turning away is a radical form of love; and that sometimes, the green light doesn’t mark the start of a journey, but its end, walked in dignity.

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Written by Maggie Gogler

Featured image courtesy of Pavel Cuzuioc Filmproduktion (Austria)

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