Facing the end on their own terms

To Yu Bo, a 41-year-old filmmaker from Beijing, death once felt like a distant concept — something dramatic, even cinematic.

He had spent years documenting life-or-death moments in ICUs, always from behind the camera. But everything shifted when Yu experienced three severe episodes of acute pancreatitis in a single year.

"It was all self-inflicted — alcohol, social events," Yu says. "But it made me realize that death is the one destination we all share. I wanted to understand it, to choose how I face it."