Wonderful by Benoît Cohen

Join us for a conversation with Benoît Cohen to celebrate his new book, a stirring and thoughtful exploration of life, loss, and grief within a family. He will be in conversation with Violette d'Urso will be followed by a signing.

PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.

Benoît Cohen’s Wonderful, with his hymn to life, delicately and lucidly stages an exploration of personal responsibility, and family choices about how people can “exit life” today.
Ten years have passed since Benoît Cohen's father's death, but the circumstances of his passing remain deeply painful and complicated. Wonderful is a touching and insightful exploration of some of the hardest questions about life, death, family, and responsibility. Cohen knew he would have to tell his family's story, which took place in Paris, in conjunction with his mother and two brothers. After a devastating cancer diagnosis, his father was terrified of death. His family sought to prevent him from undue suffering or having their actions arouse suspicion. His father's lucidly tenacious, but fundamentally irrational self-denial in the face of a terminal diagnosis, reveals a revelatory chapter in one family's experience with grief, loss, death and dying. With respect and love, Benoît and his family are determined to find a way to help his father depart with dignity and ease. But they come up against the frustrations of a health care system in which palliative care can be difficult to access or is reserved for only a "fortunate" few. Personal choices regarding "right-to-die" issues are legally sanctioned in many countries, whereas in others they are met with the specter of criminality. As they discover, there are few legal options (if any) to explore the path to peaceful exit and relief.

Born in 1969, Benoît Cohen, filmmaker and writer, now lives in Paris. After directing several films, including Our Beloved Children (2003) and You Will Be a Man (2013), he also published Yellow Cab (2017), Mohammad, My Mother and Me, which was adapted into a film, Ma France à moi (2023).

Violette d’Urso is a French-Italian writer born in Paris in 1999, currently based in New York. Her debut novel, Même le bruit de la nuit a changé (translation: Even the sound of the night has changed) , was published by Flammarion in March 2023 and translated into Italian by Mondadori the following year. The novel follows a young narrator investigating the life of her father, who disappeared when she was a child. Armed with an old address book, she retraces his steps, beginning in Naples, his hometown. Through fragments of stories she gathers, objects she collects, and what she learns about the cities she passes through, she pieces together a portrait of a man she never knew.Violette d’Urso studied medieval history at l’Ecole Normale Supérieure (Université PSL) in Paris and is currently pursuing her studies at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.

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