Death is an inevitable cinematic topic, perhaps even the topic of cinema. But for all of the trepidation in the face of fate, grim reapers, and on-screen demises, very seldom is the process of death – especially of the non-violent sort – considered a subject in its own right. Death instead intrudes on topics like revenge, war, and love as a plot resolution or obstacle to overcome. Challenging this hesitancy, a 15-minute documentary short from China called Death Education braves the subject material experientially and with an unpretentious philosophical attentiveness. Not even the material process of exhuming ashes escapes director Yuxuan Ethan Wu who sits patiently with a topic most filmmakers run from or disguise with ornamental excess.

Showing as part of the Documentary Short Film Program at Sundance, the short follows a high school class that lays to rest unclaimed ashes on the traditional Chinese Tomb Sweeping Day. The teacher introduces his students to death, that monster that comes for all, not through literature, religion, or science but by experiencing it firsthand. For most of these young students, it will be one of their first earnest experiences with the natural process, and it’s fascinating that the subject of the film would find its way into the hands of the very young director Yuxuan Ethan Wu, who is only 26 years old. He is about the age when mortality becomes tangible for the first time as friends, family, and other loved ones brush up against death.

Remarkably close to what might be called a cinematic shiva, the documentary provides an opportunity that all young people should experience: to carefully sit in the same room as death. The unavoidable and universal reality that this beautiful thing of life comes to an end only makes our time and who we spend it with that much more valuable. And that is something Yuxuan Ethan Wu reinforces.

One of the more interesting decisions in Death Education is the use of student notes as the narrative voice, though the source of the words we hear isn’t revealed until the end. This isn’t just an observatory recording of a process that most are unfamiliar with; this certainly isn’t the same approach a documentarian like Frederick Wiseman would take. There is poetry in the silence of the soundtrack and the stillness of the camera, a naturally respectful and serious meditative style to encourage reflection and even stillness. Rather than a slice of life of a crematorium, Death Education deftly holds without piecing together the complicated feelings and reactions of young people as they come into contact with the Undiscovered Country for the first time.

Death Education premiered in the Sundance Film Festival.