Victor’s Last Class follows a brazen 52-year-old acting teacher Victor D’Altorio, who is suffering from unbearable chronic back pain as he announces that he is going to take his own life. We witness the young filmmaker Brendan Brandt, attempt to change his mind over the course of five months.

Victor himself is a proud homosexual who loves life even though he is outrageous in the way he approaches it. He has been a teacher of the Meisner technique for the last 20 years, this is a method that encourages actors to “get out of their head” and behave more instinctively to their surroundings. So it should come as no surprise that he was fully committed to living in the moment and accepting all that life threw at him over the years, however painful it may be.

After battling with bone marrow cancer, he found the cancer in remission but was struck with debilitating degenerative disc disorder in his neck and back. The pain was undeniable and with few prospects of relief the thought of suicide became more and more appealing. However, Victor hated the idea of suicide in the traditional sense, he felt he could not cause that pain to the ones he loved and instead opted to openly announce via his blog that he was going to kill himself thus giving the people he cared for time to accept his decision.

It is a this point we see filmmaker Brendan Brandt step in. Over the course of the next five months, we witness Victor go from high to low and back again as he bonds with Brendan. As time passes it becomes obvious that Brendan is no longer just trying to make a film about suicide but rather becomes a closer, attempting to convince his new friend and mentor to stick around a while longer.

Brendan puts together an acting class for Victor to teach, in a last-ditch effort to remind him of the life he once loved living, is it Victor’s Last Class?

Directed by: Brendan Brandt