What science tells us about the afterlife

The immortality paradox

The love and death of Yosef and Zilli

What does dying really feel like?

When half of a couple that plans to live forever dies

‘What if death is just a dream … that you could wake up from one day?’

Cryonics is the practice of freezing the body after death, guided by the speculative belief that future science might one day bring people back to life – in death, a leap of faith. In Love Immortal, the Copenhagen-based filmmaker Ömer Sami traces these ideas through the life of Alan Sinclair, a British man who first drew media attention in the 1980s when he and his late wife Sylvia Sinclair sank vast sums of money into establishing a cryonics organisation in the hope that they might one day see a distant future together.

Blending archival footage with present-day scenes, the film captures Sinclair’s past, his life now – including the years after Sylvia’s death and the new love he’s found since then – and the distant future he continues to envision. At once a poignant love story and a philosophical meditation, Love Immortal brings a deep humanity to enduring questions about the desirability of eternal life and the fate that, despite advances in medical technology, still seems to await each of us.

Website: Guardian Documentaries

videoTechnology and the self

At the Cryonics Institute, hope for the future is high, and death is put on ice

Even in modern secular societies, belief in an afterlife persists. Why?

videoMeaning and the good life

Would immortality offer a curse of boredom or endless novelty?

videoIllness and disease

A woman embraces cryonics as she challenges the limitations of her mind and body

videoAgeing and death

When his elderly parents make a suicide pact, Doron struggles to accept their choice

videoAgeing and death

Death is a trip – how new research links near-death and DMT experiences

We publish hard-won knowledge from real people who have grappled deeply with their subjects.

We publish hard-won knowledge from real people who have grappled deeply with their subjects.

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videoAgeing and death

Demystifying death – a palliative care specialist’s practical guide to life’s end

videoTechnology and the self

When an AI rejects him for life insurance, Mitch wonders if he can escape his fate

videoIllness and disease

How the future of treating heart disease might mean having no heartbeat

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