Netflix Just Released the Trailer for One of the Best Movies of the Year

Dick Johnson Is Dead, the spectacular new film from Kirsten Johnson, is hard to define. It's a documentary, first and foremost, but it's also an imaginative guide to coping with the death of a parent. It will also, certainly, make you weep harder than anything else you see this year.

In the first trailer for the nonfiction movie, Johnson explains the basic premise: In order to grapple with her elderly father's impending demise, she decides to kill him, over and over again -- well, not actually. Rather, she decides to stage his death using various filmmaking techniques with his full cooperation. As you can see from the footage, Johnson enlisted stunt people to help stage Richard, aka Dick, tripping and falling. There's lots of fake blood. It's grimly funny, yet deeply somber as Johnson documents her dad's decline and struggle with the loss of his faculties. 

We first saw Dick Johnson Is Dead when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year, and we were shaken and in awe by the entire project. It remains one of our favorites of the year, and luckily, it will finally hit Netflix on October 2. 

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