Still: How Much Longer - Niels van Koevorden

Dutch director Niels van Koevorden decided to make his feature documentary How Much Longer** after his mother died of cancer at a mere 64 years of age. It was during Covid, and she had a strong desire to carry on living, even after the first rounds of chemo, and the pain and extreme discomfort that that entailed. Nor was van Koevorden yet ready to say goodbye. He had young kids and he had planned future holidays with his mum.

In a state of panic van Koevorden saw a therapist, who calmly put the situation into context. “’She is still your mother,’ the therapist said. ‘You did all this stuff with her. The only thing you need to do is to say a proper goodbye.’ And so that basically calmed me down.”

Yet the director was still left with the upsetting impression that his mother’s final weeks and months were coloured by questions and decisions over treatments, scans and evaluations. “Is this quality of life? What is quality? Life is about little other than the medical treatment at that moment, I think for a lot of people,” he reasoned.

With this very much in mind, he decided to examine the subject with more detachment, using a style of filming style he deployed in a previous film he made about divorce (Until Death Do Us Part), where the protagonists talked to a councillor via two 90-degree teleprompter mirrors, all the time talking directly to camera. “It's a very cinematic film because we're within a very dramatical axis,” van Koevorden tells SEE NL of How Much Longer.

In the documentary, world-premiering in IDFA Luminous and produced by Een van de jongens, we meet five people with incurable cancer, all accompanied by family members, and each dealing with their diagnoses in very different ways. Marian takes on household duties with gusto, while the previously robust, perennially optimistic, Rob takes on odd job duties at his daughter’s house. Ben goes home to Hong Kong to say goodbye to his parents (his father was also suffering from cancer), while Tilly calculates how to gain as much time as possible to spend with her grand-daughter. Rein wonders whether or not to buy a new car, and realises he may as well start enjoying alcohol once more. 

It had been van Koevorden’s intention to shoot patients up to the point of death to observe how they came to accept their inevitable passing, but this was deemed unnecessary as he observed Rob’s dignified acceptance of his fate in the last conversation he (Rob) had with the oncologist. Instead, Rob’s death is marked by an understated and respectful dark screen.

For ethical reasons, van Koevorden could not approach his subjects directly, so he relied upon the oncologist in the film (Dr Eric Geijteman) whose reassuring words we continually hear, to suggest their participation. In the event, most people agreed to take part. “Being filmed is not very intrusive, in a way, because dying is more terrible,” van Koevorden observes of their willingness to participate. Also, many of the main subjects wanted to show how difficult and painful this process is. “They participated, so others could learn and benefit,” the director adds. He regrets, however, that he was unable to work with a Moroccan subject and his family, which would have made for “a richer and more diverse palette of characters.”

Van Koevorden asked one of his best friends (Tim Blaauw) for support, both as assistant director and researcher, “because I knew that I kind of needed a friend instead of a film researcher, you know, somebody who understands me and knows where I come from.”

“In this case, Tim is also a spiritual health carer, so it was very nice because he knew very well how to talk about death with people, how to have this conversation. He's a very good listener.”

Van Koevorden is sure that his film will be of considerable benefit to the medical profession, especially among young doctors, in dealing with conversations surrounding tragic news. As we see throughout the documentary, Dr Geijteman is an exemplary professional. “All the people who have watched the film said ‘if I ever get cancer, I really hope he would be there.’” Furthermore, the doctor trusted van Koevorden throughout the whole process, and made no demands during the edit. “He was without any ego, it was really fascinating.”

The director further concedes that he was rendered “softer” by the process, despite the rigidity of the format and his desire to examine objectively the process of accepting the inevitability of death. “I always visited them at home, we had coffee, we talked a lot about their lives. And I went to all of their funerals. I met their loved ones,” he says. 

“Of course, there was also for me this reliving of tension between all the scans and all the evaluations, and how their bodies would react and how they would react mentally and physically. That's where I usually keep a process almost totally to myself, but in this case, I was very happy to share it and to be supported by a very loving crew,” van Koevorden ends.

Find out more about IDFA here.

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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Production Incentive