How do you deal with a death sentence? British pub-rock icon Wilko Johnson chose to take a victory lap.

Wilko Johnson was 65 when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given 10 months to live. The former guitarist for 60s punk progenitors Dr Feelgood considered his options: submit to chemotherapy and cling to a few more months or use his final days to circle the globe, doing what he does best.

Acclaimed rock documentarian Julien Temple (Oil City Confidential, MIFF 2010) splices Johnson's erudite and frank philosophical musings with archival and new live performance, cinematic allusions, surrealist beauty, stock footage and conversations with The Who's Roger Daltrey (who paired with Johnson on a hit post-diagnosis album). The result is an inspiring but unsentimental patchwork portrait of a man who can do nothing else but choose to live.

"Delightfully alive, inventive and droll." – Variety