Enacting and witnessing suicide in terminal cancer: a Bourdieu-inspired thematic analysis of Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door

Living with cancer increases the risk of suicide, transforming how death is anticipated, enacted, and witnessed. Drawing on Pedro Almodóvar’s feature film The Room Next Door, this study examined how suicide is represented as a relational and socially situated practice through enactment and witnessing in the context of terminal cancer. Informed by a Bourdieusian perspective, it explored how social position shapes embodied dispositions, ethical responsibilities, and the experiences of grief at the end of life. Through a reflexive thematic analysis of the film and its script, four themes emerged: (1) experiencing an unfamiliar taste of war, (2) bodies caught between life and death, (3) repositioning oneself in a dissonant world, and (4) grief as what lingers within relational ties. The analysis revealed legal and ethical tensions surrounding end-of-life decisions, including ambivalences between care, autonomy, and the potential romanticisation of self-inflicted death. By foregrounding the relational dimensions of enactment and witnessing, these findings can foster ethical reflexivity among health professionals and caregivers involved in end-of-life care. Situated within the medical humanities, this study contributes to global debates on assisted dying, the contested possibility of suicide, and relational forms of grief in end-of-life practices.