Dick Johnson Is DeadMovies like Dick Johnson Is Dead
- Key Features:
- Mortality, Filmmaking, Family relationships, Father-daughter relationship, Acceptance, Grief, Existentialism, Dark humor, Hopeful, Director-driven, Documentary, Personal journey
- Tone:
- humorous, earnest, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Film enthusiasts, Documentary viewers, Families, Individuals facing loss
- Emotional Arc:
- Nostalgia → Humor → Reflection
Dick Johnson Is Dead

With this inventive portrait, director Kirsten Johnson seeks a way to keep her 86-year-old father alive forever. Utilizing moviemaking magic and her family’s dark humor, she celebrates Dr. Dick Johnson’s last years by staging fantasies of death and beyond. Together, dad and daughter confront the great inevitability awaiting us all.
Dick Johnson Is Dead
Convinced that his daughter has forgotten how to laugh, a father shows up unannounced while she's living abroad and bombards her with outrageous jokes.

This comedic retrospective mixes archival footage and scripted sketches as it revisits all the dread — and occasional delight — that 2021 had to offer.

Elliot Hopper, a widower with three children, is working on a business deal to get his family out of financial straits when he is suddenly killed in a taxi accident. With the aid of a paranormal researcher, Elliott attempts to complete the deal from the beyond, ensuring his family will be taken care of.

After false reports of his demise put him and his work on the map, an artist decides to continue the charade by posing as his own brother. Soon, a reporter enters his life and has a profound effect on him.

A father begins dating his 29-year-old daughter Emma's high school frenemy soon after his wife passes away. His daughter embarks on a mission to break up the happy couple.

It seems that Bob Jones has everything a man could want, namely a fulfilling job and a beautiful, pregnant wife, Gail. But Bob's life is turned upside-down when he is diagnosed with cancer and given four months to live -- not even enough time to see his first child's birth. To cleanse himself of demons in his remaining days, Bob makes a video diary, hoping to pass along some wisdom to his future child. Along the way, he discovers a lot about himself.

The members of a family come to say goodbye to the recently deceased patriarch. But what should have been a heartfelt wake turns into a crazy gathering when one of the attendees reveals the deceased's best kept secret.

A debt-ridden father takes advantage of an unforeseen situation to disappear and live off the grid under a false identity. But a chance event occurs and the temptation to want to know his family resurfaces.

A recently retired man embarks on a journey to his estranged daughter's wedding, only to discover more about himself and life than he ever expected.

Before eleven years old Tilda's parents can put her beloved grandfather in an old people's home due to his progressing Alzheimer disease, she takes him on one last adventure that subliminally threatens to tear her family apart.

Markus returns home to care for his daughter when his wife dies in a tragic train accident. However, when a survivor of the wreck surfaces and claims foul play, Markus suspects his wife was murdered and embarks on a mission to find those responsible.

William has failed to kill himself so many times that he outsources his suicide to aging assassin Leslie. But with the contract signed and death assured within a week (or his money back), William suddenly discovers reasons to live... However Leslie is under pressure from his boss to make sure the contract is completed.

What starts as a poignant medical documentary about Deborah Logan's descent into Alzheimer's disease and her daughter's struggles as caregiver degenerates into a maddening portrayal of dementia at its most frightening, as hair-raising events begin to plague the family and crew and an unspeakable malevolence threatens to tear the very fabric of sanity from them all.

The young Harold lives in his own world of suicide-attempts and funeral visits to avoid the misery of his current family and home environment. Harold meets an 80-year-old woman named Maude who also lives in her own world yet one in which she is having the time of her life. When the two opposites meet they realize that their differences don’t matter and they become best friends and love each other.

Dick died last night, and Zeke and Earl don’t want anybody finding out how. That’s too bad though, cause news travels fast in small-town Alabama.

JJ, aka John Shaft Jr., may be a cyber security expert with a degree from MIT, but to uncover the truth behind his best friend’s untimely death, he needs an education only his dad can provide. Absent throughout JJ’s youth, the legendary locked-and-loaded John Shaft agrees to help his progeny navigate Harlem’s heroin-infested underbelly.

A teenager pretends to be dying from cancer as a way to cope with the realities of his daily existence and his father's terminal illness.

Zia, distraught over breaking up with his girlfriend, decides to end it all. Unfortunately, he discovers that there is no real ending, only a run-down afterlife that is strikingly similar to his old one, just a bit worse. Discovering that his ex-girlfriend has also "offed" herself, he sets out on a road trip to find her.

A father and daughter accidentally hit and kill a unicorn while en route to a weekend retreat, where his billionaire boss seeks to exploit the creature’s miraculous curative properties.

A son in denial of a serious illness. A mother facing the unbearable. And between them a doctor fighting to do his job and bring them to acceptance. The three of them have one year and four seasons to come together and understand what it means to die while living.

A father gets trapped in a one-sided incestuous relationship with his abusive son.

When 43-year-old hairdresser Suze Trappet finds out that she's seriously ill, she decides to go looking for a child she was forced to abandon when she was only 15. On her madcap bureaucratic quest she crosses paths with JB, a 50-year-old man in the middle of a burnout, and Mr. Blin, a blind archivist prone to overenthusiasm. The unlikely trio set off on a hilarious and poignant helterskelter journey across the city in search of Suze's long-lost child.

One day, hospital orderlies, watching corpse in the morgue, recognize film director. Man, even though he died, he begins to remember his life. He made a career making movies, had numerous mistresses, but never realized their dreams. His life was interspersed with many setbacks that enfeebled him from the inside. Although he made a career in film, he was not happy with his life.

A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages and, as he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.

Wendell Lawson has only six months to live. Not wanting to endure his last few months of life waiting for the end, he decides to take matters into his own hands and enlists the help of a delusional mental patient to help him commit suicide.

A father says goodbye to his young daughter. In time the daughter grows old, but within her there is always a deep longing for her father.

Just when Lola, 18 years old and transgender, learns that she can finally have surgery, her mother, who is her only financial support, passes away. Abiding by her mother’s last wishes, Lola and her father, who are permanently in conflict and have not seen each other for two years, undertake a journey all the way to the Belgian coast. They realize the outcome of the journey may not be the one they were both expecting...

In this documentary, wealthy entrepreneur Bryan Johnson puts his body and fortune on the line to defy aging and extend his life beyond all known limits.

Mama Cora, who is almost eighty years old, has three sons and a daughter. She lives with one of them, who has serious financial problems. The family meets one day to celebrate an anniversary meal, and that is when the problem arises: which of them will take care of her?

2020: A year so [insert adjective of choice here], even the creators of Black Mirror couldn't make it up… but that doesn't mean they don't have a little something to add. This comedy event that tells the story of the dreadful year that was — and perhaps still is? The documentary-style special weaves together some of the world's most (fictitious) renowned voices with real-life archival footage.

A father, who can't keep his promises, dies in a car accident. One year later, he returns as a snowman, who has the final chance to put things right with his son before he is gone forever.

Mathias Lonisse, founder of the company Love is Dead, is a breakup specialist. He is hired to break up relationships on behalf of those who, for one reason or another, prefer to avoid this often painful and delicate task. Mathias takes his job very seriously and carries out each assignment with a high degree of professionalism, until the day his mother decides to leave his father...

Story of the relationships between two sons and their father, who moves the family to California and becomes a tv horror show host after the death of his wife.

Set in the Mojave Desert, the film follows a broken-down comedian playing clubs across the Southwest, working his way to Los Angeles to meet his estranged daughter.

Oliver meets the irreverent and unpredictable Anna only months after his father Hal Fields has passed away. This new love floods Oliver with memories of his father, who, following the death of his wife of 44 years, came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized, and wonderfully tumultuous gay life – which included a younger boyfriend.

Jack is a solitary man with a mysterious past. His strange habits will soon become stranger when his past catches up with him.

A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.

Carl Fredricksen spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. But at age 78, life seems to have passed him by, until a twist of fate (and a persistent 8-year old Wilderness Explorer named Russell) gives him a new lease on life.

David loves his wife, Gillian. Unfortunately, she died two years ago. David deals with his grief by continuing his romance with Gillian during walks with her "ghost" on the beach at night. While David lives in the past, other family problems crop up in the present in the real world....

Corporate billionaire Edward Cole and working class mechanic Carter Chambers are worlds apart. At a crossroads in their lives, they share a hospital room and discover they have two things in common: a desire to spend the time they have left doing everything they ever wanted to do and an unrealized need to come to terms with who they are. Together they embark on the road trip of a lifetime, becoming friends along the way and learning to live life to the fullest, with insight and humor.

Marc, a successful, ambitious man, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and is given a few months to live. Unable to accept death, he decides to cryogenically freeze himself. The love of his life is devastated. Seventy years later, Marc becomes the first cryogenic resuscitated person in history. But this doesn't happen in the idealized way he dreamt of.

An undertaker gets married to an old executioner's daughter and, although he doesn't like it, must continue the profession of his father-in-law after his retirement.

Andy Goodrich's life is upended when his wife enters a rehab program, leaving him on his own with their young kids. Goodrich leans on his daughter from his first marriage, Grace, as he ultimately evolves into the father Grace never had.

Upon hearing his wife was killed in the Iraq war, a father takes his two daughters on a road trip, all the while searching for the right time and place to tell them about their mother's fate.

A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

A myriad of outrageous calamities befalls an eccentric English clan with more than a few skeletons in its closets when the family's patriarch dies an unexpected death.

A writer must face the sudden death of his father, but after the burial, the latter reappears to him. He will have to learn to live with this facetious companion, but difficult to explain the situation to his family, because he is the only one who can see him. This disturbing presence will create an earthquake in the family.

When Cassie's father finds himself vulnerable and bedridden, she believes she has the perfect revenge for her mother's death.

In the aftermath of a nuclear disaster, a starving family find hope in a charismatic hotel owner. Lured by the prospect of a free dinner, they discover that the evening's entertainment blurs the lines between performance and reality. Will they wind up the spectators or the spectacle?

Filmed and edited in intimate vérité style, this movie follows visionary medical practitioners who are working on the cutting edge of life and death and are dedicated to changing our thinking about both.

In the wake of a freak accident, Lance suffers the worst tragedy and the greatest opportunity of his life. He is suddenly faced with the possibility of fame, fortune and popularity, if he can only live with the knowledge of how he got there.

The funny clown Bratislav Metulskie is found dead in circus "Apollo". The retired commissioner 00 Schneider is asked to assume control of the case. Schneider and his aged sidekick Körschgen investigate to find the murderer.

Indifferent to the notion of inheriting his father's estate, a restless, aging New Yorker passes time with his friends in games of mock sincerity, irreverence, and recreational cruelty towards those around them.

Tom is a British chef in a Bondi restaurant who seems to have decided there are no longer any rules he needs to obey. Whatever Tom is up to, his actions seem to be tolerated by those around him. As Tom descends into darkness, fragments of a different story begin to emerge. All the women in his world are trying in their own, very different ways to help put him back together.

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.

For over 40 years Val Kilmer, one of Hollywood’s most mercurial and/or misunderstood actors has been documenting his own life and craft through film and video. He has amassed thousands of hours of footage, from 16mm home movies made with his brothers, to time spent in iconic roles for blockbuster movies like Top Gun, The Doors, Tombstone, and Batman Forever. This raw, wildly original and unflinching documentary reveals a life lived to extremes and a heart-filled, sometimes hilarious look at what it means to be an artist and a complex man.

A boy and his stepmother fear for their safety after an eerie creature resembling the boy's recently deceased father visits them.

Marina, 23, is growing up with her architect father in a prototype factory town by the sea. Finding the human species strange and repellent, she keeps her distance...that is until a stranger comes to town and challenges her to a foosball duel, on her own table. Her father, meanwhile, ritualistically prepares for his exit from the 20th century, which he considers to be "overrated."

A manic-depressive mess of a father tries to win back his wife by attempting to take full responsibility of their two young, spirited daughters, who don't make the overwhelming task any easier.

A police officer faces a personal meltdown following a divorce and the death of his mother.

A service which creates holographic projections of late family members allows an elderly woman to spend time with a younger version of her deceased husband.

When his young daughter's beloved companion — an android named Yang — malfunctions, Jake searches for a way to repair him. In the process, Jake discovers the life that has been passing in front of him, reconnecting with his wife and daughter across a distance he didn't know was there.

An eccentric multimillionaire signs an agreement to have his life ended. While selecting his coffin he meets a young woman who has signed up for the same arrangement. Trouble ensues when the couple falls in love and wishes to get out of the contract.

A dachshund passes from oddball owner to oddball owner, whose radically dysfunctional lives are all impacted by the pooch.

Widower Harry Keach is a construction worker who was raised to appreciate the importance of working for a living. He takes a dim view of his sensitive son Howard's lackadaisical lifestyle and has a strained relationship with his daughter Nina as he does not approve of her husband. When Harry is fired from his job, his life changes drastically as he is made to focus on the relationships around him.

Middle-aged and divorced, Wilson finds himself lonely, smug, and obsessed with his past.

Tom and Janet have been happily married for years. But a visit from a mysterious stranger leads to a dead body, a lot of questions, and a tense couples' trip with friends who may not actually be friends at all.

Three lifelong 40-year-old friends go on a huge Interrail tour to honor their recently deceased friend.

The Topalović family has been in the burial business for generations. When the 150-year-old Pantelija dies, five generations of his heirs start to fight for the inheritance.

A busy attorney, worried that his anorexic daughter Olga, who is still grieving her recently deceased mother, might try to harm herself, sends her to see a psychiatrist who's dealing with her own loss in an unusual way.

On a hot summer day in Oslo, the dead mysteriously awaken, and three families are thrown into chaos when their deceased loved ones come back to them. Who are they, and what do they want?

A presumed-dead man's current wife and former wives squabble over his funeral arrangements.

After she discovers that her boyfriend has betrayed her, Hilary O'Neil is looking for a new start and a new job. She begins to work as a private nurse for a young man suffering from blood cancer. Slowly, they fall in love, but they always know their love cannot last because he is destined to die.

Su, a woman whose friends are only men, finds herself forced to follow a series of absurd instructions to overcome the unexpected death of her fiancé.

After his father is killed in a car crash, Jack travels home to Colorado to help nurse his mother (who was injured in the crash) back to health. There, he uncovers long buried secrets and lies within his family, his friends, and his very identity.

John Peterson lives with his partner Eric and their adopted daughter in Southern California. When he is visited by his aging father Willis from Los Angeles who is searching for a place to retire, their two very different worlds collide.

Journalist Michael Ausiello embarks on a rollercoaster ride of emotions when Kit Cowan, his partner of 14 years, is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

A man decides to cook for himself and finds a revolver (which may have belonged to John Dillinger) hidden in his kitchen.

The last wish of the dying "Monk" is for his foster child, Harald, to find his real son, Ludvig. But the latter is currently in a Swedish prison cell...

A world-weary college professor is given a life-changing diagnosis and decides to throw all pretense and conventions to the wind and live his life as boldly and freely as possible with a biting sense of humor, a reckless streak and a touch of madness.

With women practically throwing themselves at him, Rich can’t control himself. But he continually blames his penis, which seems to have a mind of its own. After ruining yet another promising relationship with Jamie, Rich has finally had enough and wishes his penis would just leave him alone. The next morning, Rich wakes up to find his wish has come true and his johnson is no longer on his body.

Even though Sam's father is hardly ever home because he is often away on business trips, he is able to connect with his son by teaching him how to pack a suitcase.

An uptight documentary filmmaker and his wife find their lives loosened up a bit after befriending a free-spirited younger couple.

When a globe-trotting, workaholic father trying to visit his daughter on a last minute layover in Los Angeles discovers that she’s disappeared, he forces her awkward, nervous ex-boyfriend, still nursing a broken heart, to help him find her over the course of one increasingly crazy night.

Carlo is a doctor that has recently lost his wife. Affected by the loss, he is supported by his family and friends, and, above all, for the love he feels towards his little daughter. And then, one day, he meets Camille.

Back from a professional trip to Paris, a neurologist at the pinnacle of his career has to pick up his wife so that they can attend a family meal to commemorate his father, who died a year before. At his mother's flat, the guests are waiting for the priest to arrive while arguing about all kinds of things connected and unconnected with the world’s events and wars.

A young woman investigates the seemingly accidental death of her father, revealing many unsettling secrets and putting her in mortal danger.

A widowed new dad copes with doubts, fears, heartache and dirty diapers as he sets out to raise his daughter on his own. Inspired by a true story.

This is the story of 23-year-old Laura who lives in the largest city in the world and yet feels alone. She also knows the exact date in which she'll die: April 30. What Laura doesn't know is what she'll do from now till then, and thus she enrolls in a group of optimists, which she finds pathetic but fun. In that group she writes a list of 10 things she wants to do before she dies, some that mean a lot and some that are a lot of fun. The first thing on her list is to save a life.

Jackie is a divorced mother of two. Isabel is the career minded girlfriend of Jackie’s ex-husband Luke, forced into the role of unwelcome stepmother to their children. But when Jackie discovers she is ill, both women realise they must put aside their differences to find a common ground and celebrate life to the fullest, while they have the chance.

When former comedian Mark McCarthy is faced with a rare form of cancer, he hires a young, impressionable cameraman to document his crude and comical lessons on what it means to be a man for his unborn son.

On the eve of his 78th birthday, the ailing, alcoholic writer Clive Langham spends a painful and sleepless night mentally composing and recomposing scenes for a novel in which characters based on his own family are shaped by his fantasies and memories, alongside his caustic commentary on their behaviour.

Tommy Fawkes wants to be a successful comedian. After his Las Vegas debut is a failure, he returns to Blackpool where his father—also a comedian—started, and where he spent the summers of his childhood.

Vada Sultenfuss is obsessed with death. Her mother is dead, and her father runs a funeral parlor. She is also in love with her English teacher, and joins a poetry class over the summer just to impress him. Thomas J., her best friend, is "allergic to everything", and sticks with Vada despite her hangups. When Vada's father hires Shelly, and begins to fall for her, things take a turn to the worse...

You can’t choose your family – which is why Conrad limits his visits with his parents to an absolute minimum. When venomous, irritable Carl injures himself seriously in a fall, his reluctant son Conrad and the butt-of-all-jokes Jonas has no choice but to move back into his old childhood room. Three generations under one roof: a chance for reconciliation – or a total disaster?

William has a simple job: he makes dead bodies disappear. His daughter Gloria has become used to rough-looking men dropping off corpses, and is even convinced that some of them are haunting their house.

Jack always lands on his feet. He lands on his feet when he marries the beautiful Sarah. He lands on his feet when he buys a luxurious new home. However, when Sarah goes into labour, he takes a tumble down the stairs and lands on his head. When he comes around he discovers he is the proud father of a baby girl, but deficient in the spouse department to the tune of 1.

Aaron's father's funeral is today at the family home, and everything goes wrong: the funeral home delivers the wrong body, his cousin accidentally drugs her fiancé, and Aaron's successful younger brother, Ryan, flies in from New York, broke but arrogant. To top it all off, a mysterious stranger wants a word with Aaron.
