On queer aging and endings
This new multiple award-winning short documentary by director Christian Schultz-Quach is an intimate portrait of Norwegian trans physician and queer rights advocate Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad and their partner Elsa as they navigate mortality, identity, and love in the face of serious illness.
On Queer Aging and Endings (2025) is a short documentary from existentials:lab that extends Christian Schulz-Quach's work at the intersection of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, oncology, and queer health into a cinematic inquiry into mortality and identity. Centered on the life and illness of Norwegian trans physician and queer rights advocate Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad and their partner Elsa, the film explores how queer embodiment, serious illness, and late-life finitude refract experiences of love, vulnerability, and care.
The project traces how endings—of bodies, relationships, and social roles—open spaces for re-narration rather than closure. As an outlet of existentials:lab, the film examines where clinical expertise meets personal testimony to ask what it means to age and to die queerly today.
The director described the inspiration behind the film:
“The film is an attempt to make visible what our medical and cultural systems often render invisible: that queer and trans people facing mortality do not need to be “saved” or “inspired.” We need to be witnessed. We need imaginative languages—visual, relational, poetic—that can hold the fullness of our humanity. We need cinematic space for the unsayable, for the gaps between words where the deepest truths live.
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The film has been nominated for, and won several awards including Toronto Independent Film Festival 2025 (winner), Tokyo Indie Shorts Fest 2025 (winner) and Berlin Indie Film Festival (winner).
On Queer Aging and Endings emerges from the Sexual and Gender Diversity in Cancer Care (SGDc) Program at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, Toronto. The SGDc is a clinical and research initiative co-led by Dr. Christian Schultz-Quach and Margo Kennedy that addresses the unique needs of 2SLGBTQIA+ people facing cancer. It was co-produced by QueerAF UK, VODA UK, and PINKTHERAPY UK.
You can read a conversation with the director here. For screening locations and/or to watch a teaser please check out the film’s Instagram account.