Shot over 8 years, Death of an Undertaker is a doc hybrid feature film that features a cast of real funeral workers in a real funeral home, alongside Australian actor and filmmaker Christian Byers (Bump, December Boys)

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Blending fact and fiction, the film follows Sparrow, a part time worker in a funeral home, whose haunted psyche is cracked wide open when he is confronted with his first exhumation, imminent homelessness and the haunting spirit of a long lost loved one.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

I used to walk past a funeral home down the road from my high school. The garage door was always open. I would stand there in my uniform and stare. Hearses were washed and coffins were loaded.

A few years later, I approached them hoping to make a film. Over a period of many years, I made what I thought was a documentary. When I was offered a place working there and I accepted it, it

evolved into a doc hybrid and the character I was playing became the protagonist. I ‘boxed up’ ‘deceaseds’, I washed hearses and I loaded them. I placed floral arrangements and I looked up the driveway to the open road. High school kids wore the same uniforms I had. And they stared at me.

I’ve always loved films that interweave actors and non-actors, that blend fact and fiction - the Koker Trilogy, Hail, Kate Plays Christine to name a few. From October 2019 to January 2023, I operated as the fictional catalyst in a live documentary environment. I would change camera positions every few minutes and pre-plan scenes, using the fictional Maguffin of an exhumation of a coffin & its repatriation back to Italy to trigger conversations about diaspora, grief and mortality. It was a wild process. It’s a wild film.

CREATIVE

Writer, Director, Cinematographer, Sound Recordist, Producer

CHRISTIAN BYERS

LUKE FULLER : Sound Designer, Composer

PJ MITTON : Editor

NICKY MITTON : Composer

CAST

CHRISTIAN BYERS : Sparrow

MICHELE SALAMONE : Mick

ROSA PERONACE : Rose

STEFANO FRANCALANCI : Steve

ROBERTA BUCCERI : Bertie

ROBERT J LOPEZ : Robbie

DANIEL DOWLEY : Danny

ASHLEIGH CUMMINGS : Phoebe