Cryonic Preservation Appeals To British Man In ‘Eternal Father.’

The year 2732. The body of Nassar Ghafoor, a man who lived in the twenty-first century^street A century old, melting away after a very long sleep. The medical staff, taking advantage of technology unknown today, is making the necessary preparations to bring him back to life.

Hey, it could happen. You never know.

Ghafoor, the focus of the Oscar-nominated documentary Eternal FatherHe has committed to storing his body in a freezer indefinitely after his death, whenever that happens.

“Who wants to die? If there's a way to cheat death, yeah, why not? I thought, well, go for it,” Ghafoor says of his reasoning. “I have nothing to lose.”

Ghafoor challenges the stereotype of someone keen on resuscitation. He's not a “billionaire visionary” type, but an installation engineer for Virgin Media (coincidentally, a company founded by one of those visionary billionaires, Richard Branson). Ghafoor is in his late fifties and lives modestly in a town outside Manchester, England, with his wife, a generation younger than him, and their young children.

“I married again at a late age,” he adds. “It's always occurred to me that I want to be here longer, I want to be here longer. I was looking for ways to extend our lives, healthy lives, and that's how I stumbled upon the freezing technology… if there is a way to extend it in the future After death, perhaps my family can follow as well if they choose to do so.”

Director Omar Sami sees a universal element in the story, “which is that we're all going to deal with death at some point in our lives and how do we deal with that? And I thought that by exploring it through the Nassar family, they're very relatable…the considerations that Nassar has about wanting to… Watching his kids grow up, I thought whether you agree or disagree with the freeze or not, that's something a lot of people can relate to in one way or another.”

The director met the protagonist at a refrigeration information meeting, of the type held periodically in the United Kingdom

“I really struggled to find someone who lit up my imagination. But in the last encounter, I was lucky enough to meet Nassar who brought his family with him and they were doing these kind of demonstrations, some of which you see in the film, and I was able to see the faces of Nassar’s children light up… and [I saw] There is a beautiful warmth between them. So, I knew right away that I wanted to spend time with them and understand how they as a family understood Nassar's choice.

In the film, Ghafoor sits in a wood-paneled living room with his children, discussing a conservation plan.

“If the average [lifespan] Is 70 for males, you only got 10 years? This is what comes to my mind. I want to see you get married, and see your children,” he tells his son and daughters. “I mean, it's the human cycle. This is what they go through,” one girl says. “I'll break the cycle,” Nassar laughs.

In the voiceover at the beginning Eternal FatherGhafoor describes the ins and outs of cryopreservation. The first step will be for a doctor to declare him legally dead. “I will be put in an ice bath and my blood will be drained and replaced with some kind of antifreeze,” he says quietly. “I will be transported to the Cryonics Institute in Michigan and stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees Celsius.”

The cost of cryopreservation ranges widely – from about $20,000 to $200,000. “There's the 'Apple and Microsoft' version which is very neat,” Sami comments, “and you pay for this whole package where they have a guarantee fund that if their business goes bankrupt, they guarantee that you will be frozen out somewhere else. Whereas the cheaper option, they don't have that guarantee. It's Then you have to pay for your shipping [of your body] To get there.”

Ghafoor took out a life insurance policy to cover the costs of cryopreservation.

“If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't happen,” he tells Deadline. “Life insurance is life insurance. This is the way I see it. So, if it doesn’t happen, it won’t happen.”

Sami adds: “Your death must occur under the appropriate circumstances.” If you died in a car accident, for example, and your body was torn apart, you wouldn't be able to freeze anyway. Your family's life insurance will pay and the freezing facility will not get any of that money. But assuming you frozen and sent [to the cryonics lab] Under the right circumstances, a contract with them is only a promise to store you. They don't promise to revive you. They say: “Our mission is to store you here until the science develops sufficiently.” It then becomes somewhat unknown who will do what, and who will bear responsibility [to revive you]”.

Eternal Father Streaming (for free) on The New Yorker The website and the magazine’s YouTube channel. It is one of 15 short documentary films to be shortlisted for the Academy Awards.

“I never imagined this would happen when I made the film,” Sami says of the distinction of being shortlisted. “My initial goal was to debut the IDFA show, and it came true. Since then, it's just been kind of riding the wave of wild dreams. So yeah, it's amazing and a wonderful surprise.”

Ghafoor shared his review of the film with us.

“When Omar showed our family the finished documentary for the first time, my family and I cried. “It was really unbelievable,” he says. “It was better than I expected, and what I was thinking. The only downside was that it felt too short. “I wish it was a little longer.”

Oh Nasr. Always wanting to expand things.