With Where Do Souls Go, Brigitte Poupart makes her debut feature film, an intimate and delicate fiction. Through the heart-wrenching choice of Anna, 18, who seeks medical assistance in dying, the film explores familial bonds, grief, and the enduring mystery: what becomes of a soul at the threshold of death?
With Where Do Souls Go, Brigitte Poupart addresses medical assistance in dying through the story of Anna, an 18-year-old woman with an incurable illness. In this debut feature film, the heroine’s choice brings to the surface the fractures within a family and compels each member to confront suffering, attachment, and loss. The film progresses with delicacy, balancing the gravity of the subject and the haunting beauty of the images. As a director, documentarian, and stage director, Brigitte Poupart crafts a tight narrative around an irreversible decision. Anna has chosen to resort to medical assistance in dying after years living with the illness. The film does not treat this decision as a mere dramatic turn; it observes its intimate, familial, and moral resonances. Shot over 28 days, this near-closed setting brings together an exclusively female cast and focuses on the relationships between the characters. Time seems both suspended and limited. A silent presence, a difficult exchange, or a held back gesture give the narrative its particular tension without reducing the heroine to her health status. Anna’s decision brings together members of a family that has long been dispersed. Her mother, deeply shaken, stays by her side with a constant presence, while her half-sisters reconnect with a young woman they have been distanced from. Old wounds, silences, and questions that have never found their place are revived between them. In this proximity imposed by urgency, every bond seems poised to either break or transform. The father, a distant and patriarchal figure, weighs on this family even when he is not at the center of the scene. His absence does not erase his influence; on the contrary, it highlights the power dynamics and resentments that have contributed to the estrangement of loved ones. Poupart exposes these tensions without turning her characters into mere mouthpieces for a debate. The reunions between Anna and her half-sisters do not resemble an easy reconciliation. They are marked by years of absence, by words unspoken, and by the difficulty of returning to those whom they barely know. Yet, moments of tenderness appear amid this fragility. They do not erase the past but open up a space where characters can attempt to meet each other differently. The mother occupies an essential emotional place. Her presence conveys a deep attachment to her daughter but also the painful helplessness of one who accompanies a decision she cannot fully bear in place of the other. The film allows love, fear, and disagreement to coexist without claiming to provide a definitive answer. This restraint preserves the complexity of a subject where certainties clash with lived experience. The lush nature serves as a striking counterpoint to the urgency that weighs on Anna. Picturesque landscapes, plays of light, and carefully crafted colors evoke a poetry that is sometimes soothing, sometimes unsettling. The horse, the piano, and the landscapes become symbolic refuges, while water is associated with fate and the approach of death. These motifs give the film a sensory dimension that transcends mere dialogue. Moronic framings and a tight depth of field create a sense of intimacy, as if the viewer’s gaze were invited closer to the characters. This proximity does not mean that everything is explained. On the contrary, the image retains shadowy areas, reflecting the contradictory feelings that traverse the family. The landscape at times seems to offer a place of peace, but this peace remains fragile and provisional. The staging alternates between tested exchanges and allegorical scenes, almost suspended outside of time. These sequences sometimes evoke the grandeur of a tragedy while leaving significant room for the simplest gestures. The visual beauty does not obscure the suffering; it can sometimes make it more perceptible. The viewer is positioned as a witness, invited to observe without being presented with a ready-made verdict. This attention to images may recall other forms of singular cinema, where the journey is both an inner experience and a movement within an aesthetic universe. One might, for example, discover the pathway presented by the second chapter of L’Étrange Festival 2026, or explore the approach of Valeska Grisebach, between cinema and dream. These echoes open pathways for interpretation without conflating their worlds with that of Poupart. The slowness of the rhythm allows the film to linger on faces and silences, but it can also heighten the solemnity of certain scenes. The vaporous photography, the pronounced use of music, and the sometimes demonstrative editing create a very melodramatic tone. At times, the emotion seems insistently guided, risking making some passages feel artificial. However, this reserve neither erases the sincerity of the project nor the delicacy afforded to the characters. The narrative flirts with advocacy, placing in the forefront the right of suffering individuals to decide their end of life. But it does not reduce the issue to a formula. The family is traversed by distinct reactions, and the film shows the difficulty of sharing a decision that belongs first and foremost to Anna. Her way of questioning autonomy, support, and dignity thus remains tied to the concrete emotions of her protagonists. In this light, works dedicated to memories or the boundaries of existence offer further paths for reflecting on the ties between memory and identity. The book mentioned in the article on Arthur Dreyfus and Les Madeleines also places memory at the heart of an intimate exploration. In the genre cinema realm, Gary Sherman’s journey around Dead and Buried addresses death in a very different register. These connections remind us of the diversity of forms through which artists question what remains after loss. The time allowed to Anna shapes each encounter and gives reunions a particular urgency. Moments of joy are not presented as a miraculous healing; they exist alongside the illness in a present that remains precious precisely because it is limited. The sisters seek their place beside her, while their shared history remains incomplete. Thus, the family attempts less to repair the past than to coexist with what remains. The approach to death, as depicted by the film, does not conflate with abstract disappearance. It touches upon bodies, gestures of support, and how to respect the wishes of the concerned person. The solemnity of the final meeting gives this attention a unique force. The camera observes the situation gravely, without turning away or turning the patient into a disembodied symbol. The path toward acceptance is neither uniform nor linear. For the mother, the sisters, and Anna, it takes different forms, sometimes incompatible. It is in this plurality that the melodrama finds its nuances: the characters do not feel the same thing at the same moment, and their words do not always suffice to bridge differing perspectives. The possibility of reconciliation remains bittersweet, suspended by gestures rather than grand declarations. The film can spark discussions around individual freedom, medical support, and the role of loved ones, without substituting for the voices of those directly involved. Its staging invites us to consider these questions with caution and empathy. To broaden the perspective on singular cinematic journeys, Takashi Miike’s exploration of Sham offers another example of a narrative where the viewer’s experience is built through atmosphere and perception. In Poupart’s work, this experience remains closely linked to Anna’s presence and the faces of those around her. Finally, the uniqueness of Where Do Souls Go lies in this tension between the inevitable and the sweetness of shared moments. Anna questions the brevity of her life, while the other characters try to understand how to stay by her side without erasing her choice. Nature, silences, and reunions give this questioning a sensitive form. The narrative then leaves open the questions of affective legacy, mourning, and how a family can continue to communicate when time is running out.An intimate choice at the heart of a family story
A family united by unspoken words and pain
Images that engage in dialogue about life and its fragility
The visual poetry in the face of the risk of pathos
The weight of time, between acceptance and resistance
With Where Do Souls Go, Brigitte Poupart turns the mystery contained in her title into an intimate question, rooted in Anna’s experience. At 18, the young woman lives with an incurable illness and chooses to seek medical assistance in dying. The film does not try to resolve what happens to a soul, nor does it impose an answer to this decision. It rather accompanies the thoughts, fears, and impulses of a young person facing finitude, while giving an essential place to those around her.
Within the tight confines of this fiction, the impending death brings up the wounds of a family estranged from its father and marked by absences. Anna’s mother stays by her side, while her half-sisters reappear with their memories and unspoken words. These reunions do not repair everything: they open a fragile space where pain, anger, and sometimes a form of tenderness can be expressed. The soul, here, also seems to designate what connects beings, even when ties have been severed or damaged.
The staging resonates with these tensions through images laden with symbols. Nature, the horse, and the piano offer fleeting refuges; water, however, reminds us of the approach of the inevitable. The light and colors compose a universe that is both gentle and unsettling, where the beauty of the landscapes contrasts with Anna’s fragility. This visual poetry accompanies the characters without erasing the gravity of their situation. The slow rhythm and melodramatic intensity may sometimes insistently underline the emotion, but the performers give it a deeply embodied presence.
As time tightens, the film observes the gestures of preparation, the exchanged words, and the silences that take on a different density. The journey evoked by the title thus remains suspended between belief, absence, and memory, while each loved one seeks their way to inhabit the moment alongside Anna.
