Don’t be afraid to die

Synopsis

Just imagine you will live forever. You will be able to travel every single country on the planet. You will bring your great-grandchildren to kindergarten and later on their great-grandchildren. You will be able to pursue as many professions as you like. Some scientists are already working on our immortality. But do we really want that? The person who will live on to be one thousand years old already walks among us,” says eccentric scientist Aubrey de Grey. In his laboratory in Silicon Valley, he has identified seven points of attack against the ageing process. “Someone who is one hundred will look like a thirty-year-old and will feel like one, too.”

But this particular person could have an accident. And this is where Max More, who works in Scottsdale Arizona, steps in. People from all over the world come here to be cryogenically frozen after death. Costs are around 200,000 euros to preserve the entire body. Just 80,000 for the brain. The idea behind it all: The brain, or more accurately, what it contains, should be uploaded to a new body one day. To make this vision come true, More’s wife Natasha Vita-More is busy designing human full-body prosthetics. There is already a prototype — at least on paper. It is called ‘Primo Posthuman’ and supposed to be ageless, multi-functional, reliable, expandable and equipped with enhanced senses.

Two people are watching these developments very closely. Dmitry Itskov is in his early thirties, healthy and immensely wealthy. There is one thing the Russian is already sure of: He does not want to die. For that reason he founded the ‘Initiative 2045’, which pays for some of the best scientists in the world to carry out research: into uploading the brain, transferring the personality onto a data carrier — all to abolish death by 2045. At least for people who can afford it.
Then again, there’s Norwegian Trygve Bauge. He does not have much money, and shares a one-room apartment with his mother. “We want to have ourselves frozen one day,” declares the self-appointed cryo-preservation expert. Twenty years ago, he had his grandfather frozen in America. To be reunited one day — that is Trygve’s big dream.

This documentary sets out to find answers in a field that reaches beyond philosophy and science, and asks fundamental questions about life and death.