Mrs. Death

A production of La Perifèrica Produccions and The Fly Hunter; in co-production with IB3 Televisió, the collaboration of À punt and the participation of the Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics

Death causes us so much fear and confusion that we can hardly look it in the face. In our aseptic societies, pain and suffering tend to be covered up. Although it wasn’t always like that. Until more or less the second half of the 20th century, and in places as disparate as Europe, Latin America and the United States, there was the custom of painting and, later, photographing the dead. Something that may seem macabre to us today, had its reason for being.

The representation of the deceased was a way of honoring and mitigating the pain of the death of a loved one. The documentary, ‘Mrs. Death’, tries to discover this ancient practice for us through the current owners of the portraits and those who still have the need to visualize death, whether through a photo or the use of words.

Not so long ago, postmortem photography was a way to mitigate the pain of the death of a loved one. The documentary, ‘Mrs. Death’, tries to understand this practice through the current owners of these portraits and those who still have the need to visualize death.