Leave Them Laughing

Carla Zilbersmith, an accomplished singer/comedian and mom to a disarmingly smart 16 year old son received the ultimate bad news that she has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) with less than four years to live. An eternal optimist, she refused to despair but chose to live her life to the fullest. She continued to perform up to the end keeping her vow to exit the stage with songs about life, quips about death, and a smile on her face.

After coming across some of Carla’s skits and reading her blog (carlamuses.blogspot.com) Oscar winning documentarian Zaritsky called her up to suggest that they create a “funny, entertaining, yet still enlightening film about dying.”

Leave Them Laughing is structured as a series of recitals of her blog entries while Carla recreates her life before and during the diagnosis. Footage of her musical performances are especially poignant in light of her unbelievably heart-wrenching account of what it felt like to realise that she would soon be unable to sing, as the disease progressed.

Zilbersmith and Zaritsky have done the unthinkable by making an incredibly touching, funny and intelligent film about death. The film will make you laugh and cry and when you leave the cinema, inspired and passionate about life.