By Callum McLennan

In “They Will Be Dust,” Carlos Marqués-Marcet, the Goya-winning director of “10,000 KM,” embarks on a genre-bending exploration of life, love and death. World premiering at the packed Platform section of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the film is far from a conventional musical. It combines contemporary dance and musical elements with the stark realities of a right-to-die story.

The film is co-written by Clara Roquet, whose “Libertad” received critical acclaim at both the Goya and Gaudí Awards, and is produced by Lastor Media, Alina Film and Kino Produzioni, part of the same team behind Carla Simón’s Golden Bear-winning “Alcarràs.” Latido Films is handling international sales.

The film centers on Claudia, played by Ángela Molina ("That Obscure Object of Desire," "Broken Embraces"), who decides not to wait for her terminal illness to rob her of her agency. Instead, she and her lover Flavio (Alfredo Castro, a Larraín regular) embark on a plan to end their lives together in Switzerland. Their adult children are especially shocked that their father is considering joining her. "You think this is love? This is madness," one complains. Musical sequences are sprinkled throughout the film, with ambulance crews in choreographed chaos wrestling with a distraught Claudia in her apartment in one scene. In another, park rangers come to life and join the singing daughter. "Music and dance take you places that words can't," says Marqués-Marcet. “We believed that these elements could help us understand the abstraction that comes with death and the possible disappearance of the self.”