Röbi geht

In the organizer's words:

Robert Widmer-Demuth, known as "Röbi", has spent a lot of his life looking after others. In his profession as a social worker, he ran the "Suneboge" for three decades, a place where alcoholics and homeless people were welcome. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer at the age of 77 and told that he only had between a month and a year to live, he decided to accept the inevitable. Röbi accepts death in order not to lose his love of life. He is accompanied on his final journey by a carefully acting film crew, to whom Röbi opens up. Röbi tells Christian Labhart and his wife Heidi Schmid, who are of a similar age, about his life: about his friends, his wife and family and his great love for her. He talks to the camera about the big questions that preoccupy him as the end approaches. Again and again, the terminally ill man has to comfort his friends and visitors, but Röbi himself has come to terms with his fate: "I've lived so much, I can easily be dead," he notes at one point.

Christian Labhart, director:
Röbi is an ideal protagonist because he celebrates life even though death is waiting. Two questions in the movie (they also have to do with me) could be: "Is there life after death?" Or in other words: "Is there life BEFORE death?" The film will move along these two antagonistic points of view. (Source: press release)

In between, videos and photos from the family archive are used to look back on a life and a love that has lasted half a century: Röbi's death brings his wife Heidi to the edge of her strength. But she also talks about how, despite everything, this time allows her moments of shared happiness and a kind of preparation for mourning. (Urs Bühler, Neue Zürcher Zeitung)

Movies about dying are depressing and the Grim Reaper is a sinister fellow? The astonishingly lively documentary "Röbi geht" does away with such generalizations. It surprises the audience with subtle humor and leaves them with warmed hearts.
(Selim Petersen, SRF)