Alchemist (2022)

After suffering a tragic loss, Joaquin finds a unique way to kill his pain, but it all goes horribly wrong. Joaquin suffers the most devastating loss - his seven-year-old son goes missing while playing hide-and-seek with his dad in a park. He took his eyes off the boy for a few seconds, but those few seconds changed his life forever. The trauma and guilt associated with his son's rupturing disappearance has a considerable impact on Joaquin's psychological state. In the process he loses his wife, job, family and all forms of sociability. He becomes recluse, locked-up in his filthy derelict house withering away. He slowly invites death by self-neglect, consuming copious cocktails of prescription drugs and alcohol. Joaquin's only human interaction is with his faithful pharmacist (Chemist), who timeously fills his quota of anti-depression and sedative prescription drugs, often giving him a little extra something special to 'take the edge off'. He is solicited by his pharmacist as an ideal candidate - depressed, unstable and someone who has lost his will to live - for a new radical and unorthodox cure to end his suffering. The Chemist offers to relieve Joaquin from the pain of life, suggesting that his solution will allow Joaquin to meet his son again. Joaquin agrees to the undertaking and they form a moral contract that at some time unbeknown to Joaquin, the Chemist will do him a favour and kill him. Joaquin consents to his own death at the hands of his trusty and persuasive pharmacist, who is the only one to offer him what he really wants, a chance to be with his son again in the life hereafter.