Sundance 2025 Review: ANDRE IS AN IDIOT, Stirring, Poignant End-of-Life Doc

By their nature, end-of-life documentaries often dwell on the hard, sometimes impossible choices that the living, the dying or soon-to-be dead have to make.

Sometimes downbeat and sometimes depressing, end-of-life documentaries treat the subject matter with the respect, distance, and probity it undoubtedly deserves. Not so, however, Tony Benna’s standout contribution to the sub-genre, André Is an Idiot, a richly imagined, deeply affecting, often hilarious journey through the eyes, ears, and body of the late André Ricciardi, a successful advertising executive diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer.

Shot over three years and in post-production for another year, André Is an Idiot follows the title character soon after he receives his diagnosis of stage-four colon cancer. Unwilling to go quietly into the good night, André imagines an entirely different choice for himself and his family, deciding to chronicle his cancer journey through good, bad, and terrible via a mix of interviews with André, his wife, Janice, and their two teenage daughters.

Benna also includes interviews with André’s best friends and his former colleagues, along with the usual panoply of photos, hospital visits, and animated shorts to illustrate André’s admirably idiosyncratic world-view, one based on an irreverent, absurd approach to life, up to and including André’s incipient mortality.

A loquacious, charismatic figure in long, unkempt gray hair with an absurdist sense of humor, André narrates his pre-cancer life with a flair for the dramatic and an attention to just the right detail to elevate his stories from the mundane to the memorable. His earliest and best story focuses on Janice, his wife of several decades.

In a wildly funny monologue, André describes the implausible twists and turns that led first to a rushed marriage (Janice needed a green card, André was more than happy to provide them), a post-marriage courtship that saw them enter and win the Newlywed Game as a test for Janice’s interview with the INS, a marriage turned romantic, and the subsequent years that led to a relatively happy, stable home and two daughters before André’s cancer diagnosis irrevocably changed their lives — and his impending death — for good.

As André grapples with literal life-and-death decisions on a daily basis, including shifting treatments (chemotherapy, radiation, etc.), André Is an Idiot also doubles as a PSA (Public Service Announcement) to men of a certain age: rather than get a colonoscopy when he turned 50, he waited an additional two years, two years after his best friend and self-described soulmate suggested they get theirs together. Like most, André responded to the suggestion with laughter.

Two years later, he wasn’t laughing at all. Understandably, he regretted the decision to postpone his colonoscopy. He hoped anyone seeing his documentary would make the opposite choice.

From every indication, André received the best medical care the U.S. healthcare system could provide. At one point, André indicates he's gone through at least 50 separate chemotherapy treatments spread out over several years. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest the U.S. healthcare system, when provided to all fairly and evenly, can prolong lives, if not outright save them. An earlier diagnosis might have saved André. His access to healthcare helped him live several additional years.

André the Idiot premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Visit the film's page at the official festival site for more information.