Death of an Undertaker

Directed by Christian Byers

Shot over eight years, this hybrid documentary is set in a real-life funeral home on Leichhardt’s famous Norton St, and features an admirably game cast of actual morticians— Sparrow, a part-time worker whose fragile psyche begins to fracture in the lead-up to his first exhumation. On the brink of homelessness, Sparrow is offered shelter in the flat next door to the parlour, as the boundary between life and death – and work and self – dissolves into oblivion. Bleakly funny and formally playful.