The first feature film by Argentine director Martin Kraut is a psychological thriller that exposes how not all hospital deaths are "natural," and some are more unnatural than others.

The director said that when a country does not legislate in time on certain issues (like euthanasia), decisions on the matter are made in a "dark way, in the shadows." He said he is happy to have contributed to the debate on euthanasia with The Dose.

The film was shot in 2019, and stars Carlos Portaluppi and Ignacio Rogers.

The Dose debuted at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and was released in Argentina virtually in early 2020 amid the coronavirus crisis. This week, it will arrive in the United States via On-Demand and other digital forms from distributor Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Kraut, who was an integral part of the script and direction of the project, declared himself an admirer of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrik and Luis Buñuel. They inspired him to write the script for the thriller, based on a real event that happened in Uruguay.

In The Dose, the experienced Marcos (Portaluppi) and Gabriel (Rogers), the new and friendly nurse in the ICU of a private clinic in Argentina, compete in the daily chore of the night shift: helping to end the suffering of some patients. 

"The strange and complex reality that we live today with the covid-19 definitely resignifies the film. To the extent that it revolves around the dynamics within an intensive care unit".

The film won a contest at the National Film Institute of Argentina and allowed Kraut to meet the biggest challenge for the director of an "opera prima," which the film is: to get the money to produce it. Kraut is proud to be part of Argentine cinema, which has "great directors who have marked a path."

After passing through the genre festival circuit, Goldwyn will release it directly on U.S. digital and video-on-demand platforms on June 11.