A striking directorial debut from Australian actor Christian Byers (The Narrow Road to the Deep North, December Boys), Death of an Undertaker blurs the line between documentary and fiction, past and present, life and death.

Shot over the course of eight years in a Sydney funeral home, Byers stars as a young man who is taken under the wing of real-life funeral director Michele Salamone, as he begins reflecting on his own encounters with death and mortality. Incorporating glitchy VHS artefacts and impressionistic DV cam footage, this film provides an unforgettable meditation the nature of existence, where cinema becomes a powerful cue to evoke the presence of absent loved ones.

Having recently premiered at Sydney Film Festival, this bold documentary/fiction hybrid will appeal to fans of similarly adventurous boundary-blurring work like The Plains (AFF 2022).