The Sweetest Goodbye (2024)

When a chronically ill woman throws a goodbye party under false pretenses, her best friend uncovers the real reason behind her departure - and confronts her in a last-ditch effort to get her to stay.

    Director Biography - Emily Schooley

Emily Schooley is an actor / filmmaker / witch / rebel with too many causes who hasn’t had time to be bored since the late ‘90s.

Her past independent work has screened internationally, reaching festivals across North America, UK, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Her 26-minute 2018 sapphic short “Life and the Art of Lying” won multiple awards including Best LGBT Short (Toronto Short Film Festival 2018). The film also received recognition from the Swedish institute ValueCine for significantly surpassing gender norms on-screen: with over 90% of total screentime and dialogue going to women.

"The Sweetest Goodbye,” which Emily wrote, produced, directed and stars in, was funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, and generously supported by Panavision Toronto, William F. White, and Workman Arts.

Emily is also the founder of Laughing Cat Productions, an emerging independent production company that creates bold, inclusive, and forward-thinking women-led stories across a variety of genres and formats. Since its incorporation three years ago, Laughing Cat has incubated and received mentorship through Banff Spark, the Canadian Film Centre, the Disability Screen Office, and TMU’s Transmedia and Social Ventures zones.

Laughing Cat Productions is currently developing a new digital series project with the support of Ontario Creates.

Director Statement

"Like Casablanca, but with medically assisted suicide" is probably my favourite off-the-cuff descriptor to date for The Sweetest Goodbye.

This wonderfully-sharp summary comes courtesy of a fellow 'cynical yet hopeful' storyteller & space-holder... who also coincidentally happens to be a fellow ginger from a complex, small-town, working-class background. Take that as you will as an introduction to the film, me and my work, and everything else I am about to share below.

Truth be told, the process of making this film and releasing it to the world has changed and radicalized me in ways I never could have imagined when we began pre-production back in the Spring of 2022. Partially, this film stands as a monument to the person I was then, because I have become a vastly different woman and artist in the relatively small amount of time since.

However, I hate telling audiences what or how to think about the films I make so what I will tell you instead is this:

Firstly - this is a project made for, by, and with equity-owed artists from a variety of backgrounds who have historically had to fight for our right to continued survival... never mind achieving the privilege of leading comfortable, thriving lives, or of having our art be made, seen, and celebrated at the scope and scale we know it deserves to be. Unfortunately, our fight's still long from over - on all of those fronts.

And yes, this film is absolutely about the timely and challenging subject of MAiD (medical assistance in dying) and how deeply interlinked the poverty/disability to death pipeline is here in Canada - especially in our current late-stage capitalistic hellscape. While Clara's journey in the film is at-least-mostly fictional, unfortunately the wider issue of vulnerable people being forced to choose death because they can’t access necessary and reasonable aid is a very real threat - one which has already claimed multiple lives. While there’s a LOT more I could say on the topic, I will spare you the page count and sum up my thoughts as the following: "I believe in respecting one's right to bodily autonomy so long as they are not intentionally harming others", and "death should never be the easiest or most readily-available option when a problem could be solved by non-lethal means."

Mostly, I made this film because I want to use my art to help create awareness and much-needed change to addresses and resolve these and other glaring, intentional systemic inequities - in both the film industry and in the wider world. My films are both "social impact meets forward-thinking narrative stories" and a bit of pure energetic magick. IYKYK.

Secondly - and buckle up, things are gonna get a little weird here! - I'll share that The Sweetest Goodbye would not exist without the spirit of Nora Ephron showing up and whispering in my ear throughout this entire process. Nor would this film exist without the support of my other true ride or dies, much as Skye is to Clara in our film.

The first needlings of what this project would become were planted sometime in fall 2021 as I randomly found myself reading about Nora's quiet meticulous planning and outwardly-minimization around her own death, at the same time I was researching neurological diseases for what was supposed to be a separate screenwriting project. Somehow, both of those threads instead wove themselves into Clara's particular, raw, liminal, non-traditional story.

Meanwhile, Nora has since continued dialoguing with and mentoring me - in all the cryptic ways that those on 'the other side' so often do.

"The dead speak to me regularly" is something that 2022 Emily never would have admitted to, at least not publicly. "Because Nora showed up as a mentor for this project, I was naive enough to believe that this film would directly lead me to film industry success" is something that 2023 Emily would never have admitted to - but everything is copy and here we are now, no worse for the wear with either experience thus far. Instead of magical overnight success, Nora has since given me these and a thousand other integral lessons that have better-guided my path; I love her and this film all the more for making me do the work while the work works on me.

In a sense, Nora has become my personal Hekate to my Persephone. IYKYK.

Artistically, what I will say is that The Sweetest Goodbye is a deeply alchemical film intentionally steeped in the cloying yellow of xanthosis - it is meant to feel decaying, jarring, and /wrong/ in places, symbolic of the precarity and roughness of Clara's life. It is meant to feel hazy - more like a memory or dream - instead of just another piece of content for you to quickly consume. If you are observant upon watching, you will also notice the plethora of other tiny symbolic details woven into the production and technical design - from wardrobe color choices, to stylized dialogue, to animal + plant messengers, to the practical lighting design and the small and anachronistically-dated feeling of Clara's apartment/world. Don't worry if your conscious brain doesn't understand or pick up on much of this yet... if you're meant to get it, you inherently will. The alchemical process is funny like that.

That said, our film is also very much about women's pain and anger, and how so many women come to turn thanatotic rage inward instead of outward - largely because of the external conditioning we have received all of our lives. One of the things that has radicalized me most as both a human and artist is realizing which women's voices/bodies/stories are celebrated and respected, by who, and why... but that is a longer discussion better-served by a separate, future film project - to say the least. What's important to take away here is that Clara makes the choice she does largely because she feels she has no other choice, that hope is too much to hold out for in a world that has failed her so repeatedly often. In some ways, I think this feeling is one we can all relate to, at least to some degree.

One of the questions I am asked most frequently about this film is what specific illness(es) does Clara have? (ie why does she make the choices that she does?) My answer to that question is always "why does it matter?" (Or, "if you have lived a certain sort of life, you will understand. If you do not - be grateful.")

I hope you recognize this film for the contemporary tragedy it ultimately is, and I am deeply grateful to the intelligent and forward-thinking festivals and audiences who do.

June 16, 2024

xo Emily

"I'm not getting out of here alive

I brought a lemon to a knife fight"

-The Wombats