A powerful film chronicles one man’s last days within a loving community for all to witness.

Facing certain death from a brain tumor, Ethan “E3” Sisser adopted a mantra.

“I am embodied. I am empowered. I am ecstatic,” the 36-year-old would tell himself, in order to ward off oncoming seizures, carry himself through pain or recite for his many followers on social media. “E3” became his nickname.

We see Sisser, looking into the camera, recite the mantra early in the documentary, The Last Ecstatic Days, released in 2024. We also meet his hospice and palliative care physician, Aditi Sethi, who leaves her position to become his death doula and friend. She fulfills his wishes for a peaceful death surrounded by a caring community, filmed for others to learn from.

Director Scott Kirschenbaum – who made one of the definitive documentaries about birth, These Are My Hours – spent the last two weeks of Sisser’s life near his side with a camera, capturing each moment.

“I had no intention of making a film about death,” Kirschenbaum says by phone from North Carolina. “I simply received a phone call from [Sethi]. She asked me to speak to this young man.”

Within the first minute of their phone call, Sisser asked Kirschenbaum to film his death, “and I couldn’t say no,” Kirschenbaum says.

He thought he was making a short film but it became a 75-minute documentary showing Sisser from his days in the hospital then a borrowed home in Asheville, North Carolina with a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There, a team of death doulas and hospice workers cared for him round the clock.

Of being part of such an intimate experience, Kirschenbaum says he felt like he was embarking on a journey: “It is beautiful if you’re willing to sit there and be present with it,” he says.

Sethi went on to create the nonprofit Center for Conscious Living and Dying in Asheville, to help people live meaningful lives, as well as promote community-supported end-of-life care.

Kirschenbaum and Sethi are coming to CSU Monterey Bay, in partnership with the Hospice Giving Foundation and the CSU Shiley Haynes Institute for Palliative Care, for a screening of the film, followed by a panel discussion about end-of-life care featuring local experts including Dr. John Hausdorff, director of Hospice of the Central Coast.

THE LAST ECSTATIC DAYS Screening 6pm Tuesday, May 6. CSUMB, CAHSS Building #504 Room 1401, 3050 Divarty St., Seaside. Free with registration. 333-9023, hospicegiving.org/filmscreening.