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Watch “Eternal Father.”
The New Yorker Documentary
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Nasar Ghafoor looks healthy and vibrant, but he has mortality on his mind. Ghafoor started a family late in life, and fears that he won’t be there to see his four young children grow up. The average life expectancy for men—around seventy-eight years—looms large on his mental horizon. He decides he is interested in being frozen after death, in the hope of being reanimated. The filmmaker Ömer Sami follows Ghafoor on a visit to a “cryonics” facility, where a representative describes the process and the myriad things that can go wrong. Ghafoor is not the only one struggling to make sense of the possibility of using cryogenic technology in the hopes of cheating death. His wife wonders whether she, too, would take the step of being frozen. The kids are also in a quandary, only starting to understand the concepts involved in their father’s plan. When they are playing outside, one finds a dead bird, and runs to put it into the freezer in order to save its life. Sami captures the family’s warmth and closeness, and the scope of the question that weighs on them: What lengths would you go to for more time with those you love?
Sourse: newyorker.com
