A film aiming to normalise discussions about end-of-life care will be showing at Orana Cinemas Kalgoorlie on Wednesday, with half of Australians not talking about their wishes for their death.

The film was released nationwide on Monday at the start of Palliative Care Week, with Live The Life You Please director Mike Hill telling the Kalgoorlie Miner “we can do life better if we can fear death less”.

Mr Hill said recent data from Palliative Care Australia revealed 88 per cent of people in Australia thought it was important to think and talk about their wishes towards the end of life, but only half actually had that conversation.

“So the purpose of the movie is to really make an entertaining and safe way for people to be able to speak about this and turn their minds to work because if we don’t do that, the problem becomes that we just go into the default setting of the health system, which really means that they’ll do anything to keep us going, put us in ambulances, send us to the emergency department, even put us into the intensive care unit, unless we express our wishes,” he said.

Mr Hill said he had previously worked on topics which at face value seemed challenging and confronting but the film had turned out “really positive”.

“It’s uplifting, joyful, there are many laugh out loud moments so what we’re trying to do is sort of take away some of the fear around this and showing what the actual lived experience is like, for the people that we worked with, in terms of how they’re making their last chapter a good one, and how they’re living their best life right through to the end,” he said.

With the film showing in 60 locations across Australia, Mr Hill he was pleased to have included a dozen stories from across the country, with remote areas such as Arnhem Land and regional centres put in the spotlight.

“The stories come from people in all walks of life, different ages, they all want different things, they know that they might be living with some sort of life-limiting condition and they’re aware of that, but they’re actually really focused on different objectives in terms of making their experience at this time of life a really positive one,” he said.

“That’s what we focused on in the film. So we didn’t deliberately go looking for really positive stories, but that’s what we were lucky enough to happen upon.”

Mr Hill said he hoped the film would unlock something in viewers and everyone needed support when they were approaching the end of life, both for themselves and for their loved ones.

”It’s really important that we have this conversation in regional areas like yours, because we know that the access to services at this period of life is patchier than it is in the biggest centres. So this is really important, so that we can figure out how to actually close that gap and get better services for everyone,” he said.

More information about the film can be found at https://livethelifeyouplease.com/