“I have already lived my death and now all that is left is to make a film about it”. So said the filmmaker Hector Babenco (KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN) to Bárbara Paz when he realized he did not have much time left. She accepted the challenge to fulfill the last wish of her late partner: to be the main protagonist in his own death.

In this tender immersion into the life of one of South America's greatest filmmakers, (Director of PIXOTE, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, IRONWEED, AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE LORD, and CARANDIRU), Babenco himself consciously bares his soul in deeply intimate and painful moments. He expresses fears and anxieties, as well as memories, reflections, and fantasies, in this face-off between his intellectual vigor and physical frailty, which were the hallmarks of his career. From the onset of cancer at the age of 38 until his death at 70, Babenco made cinema his medicine and the nourishment that kept him alive.

BABENCO: TELL ME WHEN I DIE is Bárbara Paz’s debut feature film, but is also in a way Hector’s last work: a movie about making movies in an effort to become eternal.