death, me, dying tree is a meditative, service-driven documentary project that seeks to transform our cultural relationship with death. Interweaving interviews with death and community care experts and the mythic love-and-death story of Isis and Osiris, DMDT creates a held, joyful space to grieve, reflect, and celebrate life—inviting us to meet mortality with curiosity, reverence, and connection.
At its heart, the film explores acceptance: of death as part of life, of grief as a communal experience, and of our power to shape how we die, mourn, and return to the earth. Through personal stories and expert insight, this documentary encourages life-affirming conversations around end-of-life planning—advance directives, body care, legal choices—and highlights green burial and human composting as ecological and spiritual alternatives.
Directed by certified death doula and artist Lana Smithner Greenleaf, the film blends immersive live events, B-roll of gardens and compost, mythic stop motion animation, and a calming original score. It’s designed not only to inform, but to down-regulate the nervous system through sound and imagery, allowing viewers to truly digest the material and metabolize grief.
The documentary culminates in an interactive, guided death meditation—offering audiences a moment of stillness, clarity, and internal reckoning. By merging art, activism, and healing, DMDT is a visionary exploration of how embracing death can help us live more fully, together.
At its core, this story is about raising awareness, amplifying underrepresented voices in end-of-life care, and advocating for more compassionate, ecologically responsible, and community-rooted approaches to dying.
