LuLu is unlike anyone you’ll ever meet.

LuLu gathers friends like a dog gathers fleas. Meet her for a Bud Lite, and you’ll end up snorting beer through your nose, swaying to the jukebox, feeling the inner rebel in you bubbling up. Her cussing puts sailors to shame. She inhales Marlboros like an unsupervised six-year-old devours M&Ms. She downs Double White Russians and Dewar’s straight up.

You wouldn’t guess LuLu, or Dr. Louise Nutter, discovered a groundbreaking antibiotic /anti-cancer drug, the kind of achievement that wins you a Nobel Prize. Or that she started college when she was 15, whizzed through grad school and got her Ph.D in biochem in 3-1/2 years.

She’s a pioneering cancer scientist. Demanding and beloved professor. Amateur poet and novelist. A farm girl. Former cheerleader. Her nicknames include “The Bull” and “Passion Pot.” At her prime at age 42, LuLu gets a phone call: She has end-stage breast cancer. She’ll die 15 months later.

Shot during those last 15 months of LuLu’s life, The LuLu Sessions is a raw, intimate, yet surprisingly humorous story about the filmmaker showing up for her best friend, and together, testing the limits of their bond while taking on life’s ultimate adventure – death.

Despite all of her knowing and bravado, LuLu’s last months are filled with the unexpected. At last, she’s forced to admit her frailties and limitations. A retreat to her childhood farm in Vermont to seek stability and solace explodes into a confrontation with resurrected ghosts. Dying becomes a surprising process of shedding – old presumptions, values and ties and urgently adopting different ones. The quiet and arduous work of making peace in her life has only just begun.

Forcefully vocal and deeply reflective, LuLu makes this last journey accessible and heartfelt in a way that has rarely been seen on screen.