Dedicated to “my family, the living and the dead,” German director and screenwriter Matthias Glasner’s black comic Dying (Sterben) manages to feel intensely personal yet symphonic in scale.

Three hours long and broken into five chapters plus an epilogue, the film is focused on Tom Lunies (played by Lars Eidinger), a Berlin-based orchestra conductor caught in the jaws of the Gen X crunch.

Lars Eidinger in Matthias Glasner’s film Dying

Still in thrall to an ex-partner – to the point where he’s present at the birth of her child to her current partner, a man he dislikes intensely – Tom is also monitoring the decline of his elderly parents back in his hometown, while preparing for the premiere of a new work by his frequently suicidal best friend Bernard (Robert Gwisdeck).

And just to add to his burden, he’s also keeping an eye on the antics of his semi-estranged sister Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg), an alcoholic dental hygienist. There’s little time or energy to spare for his workplace romance with the orchestra assistant Ronja (Saskia Rosendahl) – and she knows it.

The film unfolds in novelistic fashion,...