Chronic

Chronic is director Michael Franco’s follow-up to his 2012 drama After Lucia and has garnered strong press after screening in Competition at this year’s Cannes.

A subtle, detached but very powerful drama, it stars Tim Roth as David, a full-time hospice nurse who cares for the terminally ill. Conscientious and compassionate, he’s excellent at his job: providing comfort while shouldering the immense, unspoken emotional burden of patients who are nearing the end of their lives.

But increasingly his dedication seems almost unhealthy, a product not only of empathy but of difficulties in his own personal and emotional life; and Franco’s camera watches coolly as these issues crystallise in a slow reveal that lasts until the film’s final moments.