This month Mark Cosgrove, Cinema Curator at Watershed, and Palliative Care Consultant Julian Able discuss May's Caring About Dying season of films at Watershed. The films are screening as part of the cultural programme of the 4th International Public Health and Palliative Care Conference, of which Julian is the Chair of the organising committee. The conference explores how to reframe death and dying and brings these two subjects out in the open to talk about loss and suffering, and how to foster community participation and resilience in response. In this podcast Mark and Julian talk about our contemporary context for dying, the professionalisation of end of life care and the films screening at Watershed – Amour, Still Alice and Last Orders – and their vivid portrayal of the realities and emotions brought on by death.