Original subtitles

Okay. Three, two, one.

Let's start here.

♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

♪ Happy birthday... ♪

It's July 7th, 2015, as you can see.

And I'm at a birthday party of the oldest person in the world.

♪ Happy birthday, dear Susie... ♪

I'm sure this might sound weird, but I've been obsessed with

the Guinness Book of Records

and the oldest person in the world, in particular,

for many years.

It's such an odd sociological phenomena.

Every time the oldest person in the world dies,

it's in every newspaper and all over the internet.

Why are people so fascinated?

Why was I?

At the moment I am writing this,

there’re eight billion people alive on Earth.

We all come from parents and grandparents

and great-grandparents and so on.

All of us have our brief time here.

And I hate to say this,

but all of us will certainly also die.

Although nobody knows when.

In fact, nobody knows what's gonna happen tomorrow.

And it seemed to me the oldest person in the world

stirs all this up in us,

as if this one person has somehow

outsmarted time and death and fate.

All of the great mysteries that shape our lives.

So when Susannah Mushatt Jones from Brooklyn, New York

became the oldest person in the world back in 2015,

she was just a few stops away from me on the subway.

And it turned out that she was having

a big public birthday party the following week.

It seemed like maybe a sign I should film her.

I'm not really one of those people who says stuff like,

"The universe is telling me to do this,"

but maybe I kinda am.

Let's give a big hand clap to Miss Susie,

the oldest person in the world.

Press, do me a favor.

Just point your cameras that way for a second.

Is this a birthday party celebration or what?

And we want her to enjoy the day with her family.

We want you guys to enjoy, indulge on her,

take numerous photos.

We wanna try to get as much sound bite out of her.

And this is a great honor for us in Brooklyn, New York.

-Happy birthday, Miss Susie!

There you go.

It was a huge spectacle.

There were TV news reporters, politicians giving speeches.

When you live in Brooklyn,

you can live a long time.

Representatives from the Nets and other sports teams.

Youth groups singing and dancing.

And the entire time, Miss Susie, as she's called, was asleep.

♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

It was this huge elephant in the room.

There was something almost hysterical about

how people ignored that fact.

♪ Happy birthday, dear Susannah ♪

They poured it on.

Miss Susie was a giant, a credit to Brooklyn,

a legend in her apartment complex.

Someone even said, "May she live 116 more years."

All the while, the raw reality of that kind of age,

barely being able to keep your eyes open or your head up,

was the one thing no one said anything about.

It was weird!

We love you, Miss Susie.

Say hello to everybody. Hold up.

Say, "Thank you." Say, "Thank you!"

-And I love every one of you. -All right!

I had seen Miss Susie's 85-year-old niece, Lavilla,

at the birthday party, and she said

I could come by a few days later

and visit Miss Susie in her apartment.

Yes, she was asleep the whole time we were there.

And yes, she seemed to have almost transcended being human.

But hanging out with the two of them wasn't painful or sad.

In fact, it was the opposite.

It was one of the most inspiring experiences I've ever had.

Well, how else could you be with her?

No, there's no other way, but it's still nice to see.

Yeah. Okay.

Maybe it was just the way that Lavilla touched her.

You’d said she'd become more like a child.

- Yes. - Explain what do you mean?

She likes to be touched.

She likes for you to do things to her body, like comb her hair,

brush her hair, pluck her whiskers, and do her nails,

and just rub, touch her.

That's what babies want.

She's thriving on the touch and the love.

Lavilla explained that Miss Susie came to New York City

from Alabama in the 1920s.

She worked for White families as a maid and nanny for 50 years.

She was briefly married but never had children of her own.

She does have more than 100 nieces and nephews, though.

And somehow on her salary, she was able to put many of them

through college, including...

Lavilla.

Does she know she's the oldest person in the world?

Have you told her that? What did she say?

"Really?" She said, "Really?

I can't believe that."

I don't know whether she get the implication of 116.

The oldest person in the world.

What they have? 47 billion people in the world about?

How many people in the world? Billions.

As far as we know, she's the oldest.

I have to keep saying that to make it sound like it's real.

Fabulous. It's such a blessing.

I do, I want you to know, I do believe in a God.

And everybody prays for her. Family prays for her.

And thank her. Thank God for her.

She's a living legend. Up in this project.

Up in this project.

She's really wonderful. I love it.

The world's oldest person has died

at the age of 116.

Susannah Mushatt Jones lived in New York City.

She was born near Montgomery, Alabama...

Jones was born in Alabama in 1899

and was the daughter of sharecroppers

and the granddaughter of slaves.

Miss Susie was the last known living American

to be born in the 1800s.

The world's oldest person is now a 116-year-old woman

living in Italy.

At the beginning of making a movie, I never really know

what I'm doing or why.

It's just a strange compulsion.

In this case, all I knew was that experience

with Miss Susie and Lavilla got me somehow.

It's only years later that I can see this movie

took on a life of its own,

became more than just the oldest person in the world.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

For me, it's an honor to be able to meet her.

- Are you rolling? - Yeah.

So, interview one.

Okay. So the first question is

if she could just tell us her name, and how old is she?

Okay.

Emma, the first question, an easy

Her name is Emma,

and she's 115 years old.

- Wow. - Next birthday 116.

Emma Morano was born on November 29th, 1899.

At the moment this is being filmed,

she's the last person alive who was born in the 19th century.

One of the things I've noticed

about the oldest person in the world

is that everyone always wants to know their secret.

The one thing that explains why they've lived so goddamn long.

Emma Morano's secret, she tells journalists?

She eats three raw eggs a day.

I saw a video of her singing.

I read somewhere that she likes to sing.

Mm-hmm. Can she sing for us?

Can she sing? Yeah.

Emma?

I looked it up later,

and this song was a big hit in the 1930s.

It was from a movie called What Scoundrels Men Are!

Which seems apt because another thing Emma says to journalists

when they ask her secret is that

she stays as far away from men as possible.

She said that in her 20s,

she was forced to marry her neighbor.

He had threatened to kill her if she didn't.

They had a baby who died as an infant,

and her husband abused her.

So, after a few years, she kicked him out.

All of this probably happened right around the time

she would've seen this movie in a theater.

What scoundrels men are, indeed.

Emma has lived happily alone ever since.

Ah, she says, "Keep men away."

She doesn't want anything to do with them.

He's a good man. He's okay. He's okay.

He takes such good care of her.

Right now, we're doing that thing in documentary

where you film someone sitting in their natural environment

and they pretend you're not there.

But Emma Morano seems confused,

and the interpreter has left the room.

I feel like I need to say something to let her know

it's okay, but I don't speak Italian.

So, I go over to her.

Her hand was so soft.

And we weren't just holding hands, we were kind of

caressing each other's hands

and looking directly into each other's eyes.

It was so strange but really pleasurable.

I'm sure this might sound weird, but I don't think I've ever had

such an intimate experience with a stranger before.

Will you tell her it's a real honor to talk to her?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

There's something kind of mesmerizing about this.

I came across it on the internet right after I filmed with

Emma Morano and just watched and watched.

It took me a few minutes to realize that the slight flicker

in the far-right digit is someone dying

and then someone being born.

They're both happening all the time, of course.

Maybe I was more sensitive to all this cycle-of-life stuff

because I'd lost someone dear to me.

And my girlfriend, Kat, and I were about to

have a child, our first.

Atlas Isaac Galasso Green, seen here in his very brief moment

as the youngest person in the world.

There's a great headline from The Onion:

Miracle of Life Happens For the 83 Billionth Time.

And it's true.

We've all been there.

It's the most common and the most profound thing there is.

Every single one of us has been

the youngest person in the world

for a millisecond.

But when I sniff the top of his head,

it's the greatest smell ever,

all hope and possibility and newness.

Around this time, it occurs to me,

I could keep filming with the oldest people,

and I could also film Atlas growing.

He could be a kind of yardstick showing time passing.

The world's oldest person, an Italian woman,

has died at the age of 117.

Family and friends say she died while

sitting in an armchair at home.

- Here? Or... ? - Yeah. Right there's good.

Okay, Aunt V.

So, Mr. Daley would like you to sit here.

Remember, it's not going to take long, so.

Very good. Okay.

He wants to know how you feel about being 117 years.

- Feeling good. - Oh. Feeling good.

The young men are very impressed, Aunt V,

and is wondering if you have a word of advice for them.

- A word of advice for them. - All the time.

They're so impressed with you.

- All the time. - Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Please.

The poem that Violet Brown is about to recite, a poem,

I'll point out, she memorized 110 years earlier, was written

by Lord Byron in 1815, and is based on a story from

the Old Testament, the story of Belshazzar, an arrogant king

who flouts the will of God, and God strikes him down.

That is our homework we get for

in the morning.

Catch and hold.

Mm!

So, what I catch, I hold.

Oh.

smile.

Yes. Mr. Daley loves your smile.

Smile at the camera.

Violet Brown was married twice, worked for many years as

a church organist and music teacher, had six children.

And her son, Harold, who is here sitting on the veranda,

is 96 years old and actually has his own record from Guinness

for being the oldest person with a living parent.

Love.

Love. Love.

Later, I found this photo from 1903 of

school children in Jamaica.

It's not Violet Brown's school, of course, but I imagine

this is probably close to what hers looked like.

And I picture her as the girl with her face buried in a book,

memorizing Vision of Belshazzar.

Turns out that the story of Belshazzar is where

our expression, "Your days are numbered," comes from.

God tells that to Belshazzar, and it's true.

I guess it's true for all of us.

Your days are numbered.

The diagnosis came out of nowhere.

I had tried to run one day, and after about a minute,

I had to stop.

I was too tired.

I told my doctor that I was probably feeling so exhausted

because I had a one-year-old kid.

I'd just turned 50 and was killing myself

trying to finish a film.

Why does a person's blood start making

way too much of a certain protein?

Why did mine?

It all happened so fast.

There's some things I remember, but lots that now I can't.

I remember I started chemotherapy

and feeling like shit all the time.

I remember not wanting to tell my mom.

But I can't really remember now if I was scared.

I must have been.

I know Kat was scared.

I remember listening to this song, The Sea Horse by

Yo La Tengo, over and over and over again.

Sometimes like 20 times a day.

There was something in the melody and the texture.

I even added a little vocal

that I would sing over and over again.

♪ Everything's gonna be all right ♪

♪ Everything's gonna be all right ♪

After Violet Brown dies, it's an odd moment of limbo

with the oldest person in the world.

It's like the handful of years

when the Nobel Prize wasn't given out.

I go to Guinness to try to make sense of it.

It's hard for me to look at this footage now, though.

I can see how sick I was.

And now I'm gonna leave you.

I was just trying to keep working.

But even with the oldest person in the world,

things were askew.

Hey. So will you say the date today

and who the oldest person is right now?

Well, that'd be a challenge, actually.

Well, what is today's date?

This is Craig Glenday.

He's the editor of the Guinness Book of Records.

- 17th. - 17th.

So today's the 17th of May 2018.

And technically, there is no oldest living person.

We... yeah.

We have, we're in a slight limbo at the minute.

The oldest person died. Who's the new one?

I think the next oldest is Nabi Tajima.

The family have sent us what we'd requested

in terms of available paperwork.

There was too many question marks for us to be able

to approve the case.

And so, technically, there is no oldest living person,

which is obviously nonsense.

There is someone who's old, but just not officially.

It's a fundamental record, isn't it?

The oldest person.

But people don't really hold it very long.

The oldest record just keeps on relentlessly

coming in, coming in, coming in.

People are desperately keen to have that record.

Maybe not actually the record holders themselves,

but the families or the district where they live.

But I'm definitely going for the quality of life

and not length of life.

Well, look at me. I'm not,

I’m not gonna live forever, am I?

But the idea of going to the gym to have another two days

at the old folks’ home at the end isn't really my idea

of what life's about, so.

It was not lost on me that I was making a film about

old people, and suddenly, there was a real question

if I would be one myself.

I think in that moment, it felt like the only thing to do was

to double down on life and this project.

Maybe I was even a little manic about it.

This project, you asked when’s it gonna come out?

So what we're gonna do is film every person who's

the oldest person in the world, and in

maybe 10 years, put out a first version of this.

Oh, okay. Wow.

But then we're gonna keep filming and keep adding to it

forever, or as long as I can.

So, it's kind of life work.

It'll go on forever.

And I'm hoping in a couple years, we can come back

and interview you, and maybe 20 years, interview you.

You'll get older and older.

If I'm still here, yes.

I don't mean here at Guinness.

I mean here on Earth, but yes, okay.

That's a lovely idea, though. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I hope to present you a certificate one day then

for the longest documentary. Wouldn't that be a fun thing?

- Yeah. - Yeah.

It'll have a cast of thousands.

Time passes.

Nabi Tajima dies.

And the limbo period with the oldest person in the world ends.

Oh! Oh!

Ah.

Can you just tell her we're really

honored and thankful that she would talk to us.

On behalf of Guinness World Records,

it gives me great pleasure to confirm Kane Tanaka is

the oldest person living,

aged 116 years and 66 days.

In Japan, September 21st is Respect for the Aged Day.

On that day, there's a newspaper article about Kane.

And she's quoted as saying, "I don't think I'm gonna die soon.

In fact, I've never thought about it."

That you got plans because you're gonna have to

carry that everywhere with you.

Ah, this is progress.

I've never been able to look at it.

Really. Oh, really?

Don't move too much ‘cause then you're gonna move the needle.

Then I gotta stick you again.

Oy.

Like I said, the reason I asked about it is

‘cause I seen....

Oh. Oh, you calling.

I'm calling Daddy.

What happened to Daddy?

What happened to Daddy?

It was six months later, and the worst part about

the chemotherapy was that it wasn't working.

My doctor said the only good news was that I could now try

this brand-new drug with a weird name, daratumumab.

Daratumumab is indicated for the treatment of

adult patients with multiple myeloma.

In combination with lenalidomide and dexamethasone

in newly diagnosed patients who are ineligible

for autologous stem cell....

Somehow, miraculously, it worked.

Everything that had been out of whack in my blood

went back to normal.

It literally saved my life.

So I said to my doctor, "How does this daratumumab work?

What did it do?"

She said, "We don't know."

And so, I said, "How long is it gonna keep working for?"

And she said again, “Who knows?"

So I said to her, "How am I gonna live with that?

The idea that at any moment, it could stop working?

It could stop working tomorrow.

It could stop working in two weeks.

Who knows what's gonna happen?

It's gonna drive me nuts."

And she said...

"I can't help you with that."

It's September of 2019, and Kane Tanaka’s already

had the title for more than a year.

When you're making a movie about the oldest person in the world,

and the oldest person in the world doesn't seem like

she's going anywhere anytime soon, you go film

the second-oldest person in the world.

We should get at close-up.

A slight fact check.

At this moment, Kane Tanaka is still very much alive,

so Sister André is, in fact,

the second-oldest person in the world.

Apart from that, Sister André seemed really with it,

so I asked her all the big questions.

What's the meaning of life?

Are you scared to die?

What do you do with regret

and all the things you wish you could change?

But none of it really went anywhere.

Pardon me?

I realized later maybe these were my questions,

the questions of a 50-year-old who's grappling with

his own mortality

and was slightly sentimental in the first place.

So I was reduced to asking perhaps

the dumbest question there is.

So, she says there is no secret about longevity.

It’s God decides.

Sister André was born in 1904,

a few months after the Wright brothers' first flight,

a few months before the ice cream cone was invented,

and the same year the New York City subway opened

and this film was shot.

I love these images, so I'm gonna let this play

while I tell you about something that both

Sister André and the other nuns brought up.

They said that when Sister André was born, she had a twin sister.

But when the two girls were toddlers,

their nanny took her twin to a dance, and the twin

got too hot in the sun, caught pneumonia, and died.

The other nuns at the nursing home said that they thought

that in that moment, the other twin's life force went into

Sister André, and that's why she's lived so long.

That's her secret.

I thought about something else, though.

I couldn't help imagine the reverberations of grief

and guilt and blame that must’ve

passed through Sister André's family.

And did this one random and tragic event

somehow shape her life?

Was it part of what led her to convert to Catholicism

at age 19, which is unusual?

And then to become a nun at age 40, which is really unusual.

Happy New Year, Daddy.

Happy New Year, Daddy.

Hey, Bunny. I remember

when you didn't even know about tomorrow.

Do you remember that?

- Yeah. - When you were a baby,

you didn't even know what tomorrow was.

I just said, "Goo goo gaga."

And now you know what tomorrow is, though, right?

- Yeah. - What's tomorrow?

Thursday.

I'm gonna smack the table when I'm a big kid.

Got it.

The first number is H.

The former youngest person in the world is now

three years old, learning about time, about minutes, hours,

days, and seasons, how the world works.

January, Febru-, March, and April, May,

June, July, and August, September, October.

Bunny, are you an old person or a young person?

- You're an old person? - Yeah.

You know what I'm making a movie about?

Yeah.

The oldest person in the world.

Do you know any old people?

Is that too much in your mouth?

Hey, you know how old Frank is?

I don't know.

- Frank is 90 years old. - Oh.

- Is that super old? - Yeah.

Are you gonna be that old someday?

- Yeah. - Really?

- Getting very old. - What'd you say?

I'm getting old.

This is my mom, Barbara Green.

And this is her boyfriend, Frank.

My own father, Isaac Green, died in 2015,

right before I started this movie.

He was 91 years old, had had a long and good life,

and his health was failing, so it was not a tragedy.

Couple years later, my mom met Frank,

and they are like teenagers in love.

My mom says no man has ever been

as sensitive to her emotional needs as Frank.

They have a gag where they say,

"All we want is five good years together."

And then my mom will say, "So when does the clock start?"

And Frank will say, "How about right now?"

And then they both crack up laughing.

10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17.

Do you know what it means when people die?

Yeah.

- What does that mean? - They...

Brrr. Bonk.

Here comes the train. Brrroo.

There's that quote from Søren Kierkegaard.

"Life can only be understood backwards,

but it must be lived forwards."

It's January of 2020, and none of us has any idea

what is right around the corner.

It's hard to remember now, but in the beginning,

suddenly everybody was afraid they were gonna die.

And lots of people actually were.

I'm immunocompromised and not even going into grocery stores.

Maybe Kane Tanaka will outlive me.

For a year, there's no way to film anything.

There's no travel, and nursing homes are impossible.

And I wonder if this project was a terrible idea.

All that time and effort for nothing.

I'm desperate to film something.

-Good morning. -That must be Sam.

Yes. Hi, everybody.

Hi.

I hear about the oldest siblings in the world.

And since everything is on Zoom these days,

this seems especially well suited.

The D'Cruz siblings have had the record for a year now

after they dethroned the Mangham siblings

of Pike County, Georgia.

I'll be 93 October.

96 years old.

I'm 99 years old.

I'm 101.

And I'm 102 years old.

The Mangham siblings had been alive for a combined total

of 490 years, but that was no match for a family of 12.

I'm taken with how well they all get along.

Apparently, all of them hang out on Zoom

every morning at 8:00 AM.

-You know why we never fight?

-That's right. You're right. -That helps a lot.

-Speak for yourself, Genia.

That's very good.

-My greatest secret is having a martini every night.

-That's a good one.

This is Doreen, and she's the oldest of

the D'Cruz siblings at 97.

She's sitting next to her daughter, who's off camera.

Since breaking the record in 2021,

her brother, Pat, here on the right, passed away.

-He was the first to come from Pakistan to Canada.

And we all followed after him, and then we said,

"Now he's the first leading the way into the new life."

-Oh, that's a good one. -That's a good thought.

-We are part of—

Yeah, yeah.

But...

Can my mom say something about Uncle Pat?

Yeah.

Okay. Go ahead.

Pat was, was my first friend.

He was a great brother.

It's okay. It's okay.

It's hard because, you know, she's the oldest.

Hard to see your younger sibling pass before you.

Right.

-It's okay. -Yeah.

It's now possible to film outside,

and this is something

I've been wanting to do for a long time.

We are behind the Sangamore Shopping Center

in Bethesda, Maryland.

It's where I found my brother Dave back in 2009.

He was slumped over in the back of his car...

asphyxiated.

This is the first time I've ever been back.

And it's so much smaller than I remember.

The thing is, with suicide, you're just left with all these

shitty feelings and questions that can never be answered.

Should I have not believed him

when he promised he wouldn't do it?

Should I have stayed with him in DC

when he got out of the hospital

instead of going back to New York?

You go back to this place after so many years, and part of you

maybe hopes that somehow you can squeeze through some wormhole

in space and time and change the past.

What happened didn't actually happen.

But you know that's crazy.

So maybe you come back just to reset something,

to edit the scene differently.

Around this time, someone says to you, "Why on earth,

if you're trying to make sense of the death of your brother,

would you make a film where

the main character dies over and over and over again?"

And you don't really have an answer.

Meanwhile, it's 2021,

and Kane Tanaka's finally getting vaccinated.

She's now held the record as the oldest person in the world

for more than two years, which is pretty unheard of.

Looking back through the list, others have held the title

for 44 days, 106 days, 331 days.

Emma Tillman, in 2007, was the oldest person in the world

for only four days before she passed away.

And it makes me think if aging were a competitive event,

Kane Tanaka would be going up against this woman.

Jeanne Calment is the oldest person ever, or at least

the oldest person who could prove their age with documents.

When she died in 1997, she was 122 years old.

Jeanne Calmant was French, smoked to the end,

and in her last years, was a kind of celebrity.

Jeanne Calment has recorded a rap album.

Producers recorded her speaking voice and mixed it

with rap and techno rhythms.

The album will be entitled Time's Mistress.

Hello.

My name is Jeanne Calment.

My name is Jeanne Calment.

I am the oldest lady in the world.

I am the oldest lady in the world.

After she died, Jeanne Calment was eulogized as

The Michael Jordan of Aging,

and nobody's really come close to

a record of 122 years old since.

But Kane Tanaka turns 119, and then she overtakes Sarah Knauss

to become the second-oldest person ever.

And I go from feeling like Kane Tanaka is messing up

this movie to actually rooting for her.

Jesus Christ, can she do it?

Can she break Jeanne Calment's record

and become the oldest person ever?

Eh?

Yes.

Can I smile?

Uh-huh.

Okay. Go back into your office.

My younger brother Dave has now been gone

for more than 10 years.

And there's that thing that happens when someone dies.

They get frozen in time.

...English. You'll love it.

They're not connected...

The world keeps changing, but he stays the same,

always talking on a landline.

- Thank you. - Okay?

Okay. Thank you, Mom.

You know what breaks my heart?

My mom and I have only one video of Dave,

and I already showed it to you.

I can't believe that's all there is.

I look everywhere, but he died in 2009

before everyone filmed everything all the time.

I do find these little videos on his computer, though.

He's behind the camera, filming his family.

And in a way, it's fitting because the only real thing here

is that he's gone.

I read about this thing called the Hayflick Limit,

named after a scientist named Leonard Hayflick, who discovered

that our cells can only replicate

a certain number of times and then no more.

That's why we die.

The max lifespan Leonard Hayflick determined we can

ever achieve is 125 years, which means that probably

no matter how many episodes of The Blue Zones you watch,

your days are numbered.

And for me, in particular, the average lifespan of a man

in the US is 77, so they are definitely numbered.

Which I'm starting to realize can either be the kind of thing

that keeps you up at night or is a reminder that

our time is short, and every day is precious,

and you better enjoy it.

In that spirit, I know this movie has been heavy at points,

so let's take a break, kind of like a seventh-inning stretch

for 60 seconds, just to remember that there's so much beauty

and pleasure in the world.

Atlas?

Atlas?

How about Lightly Row?

- Okay. - Remember to stand tall.

Bunny, how old are you now?

- How old is that? - Five.

Yeah? Do you know what year it is?

2022.

You got it!

Hey, this is a different kind of question, Bunny.

What do you think time is?

Infinity.

What does that mean?

What do you mean?

That it never stops.

Is tomorrow...

where does tomorrow go when it's done?

Into the past.

You understand all these big concepts,

like the future and the past and the present.

You didn't used to understand that.

But the numbers are, are, are super hard because

- I always forget the numbers. - Yeah.

But in this journal, I keep track of

how many years old are you.

How old are you gonna live to be?

- 100. - Really?

And I'll ask you some questions.

Okay. You ask me some questions.

What color is your buttons?

My buttons are, I'd say, silver buttons.

What color is the camera?

Camera is black.

What age are you gonna be when I'm 50?

When you're 50...

I'm gonna be...

100.

I'm gonna be 100 years old when you're 50.

- That, that's 100. - Yeah.

The world's oldest known person, French nun Sister André,

passes away at the age of 118.

The spokesperson says Sister André, whose real name

was Lucile Randon, died in her sleep Tuesday

in the French city of Toulon.

The nun was considered the oldest person in Europe before

the death of Japan's Kane Tanaka last year left her

the longest-lived person on earth.

No. No. No.

It is what it is.

Mom, what is the date today?

Today is February 5th, 2024.

Did I pass?

You're not gonna send me to the old age home yet?

My mom is laughing, but February 5th

is an especially tough day for her.

It's my brother Dave's birthday.

On the day we were filming, he would have been 55 years old.

I always try to see her on February 5th, and I know that

being around Atlas is good for her spirit.

Let's see. He died 15 years ago.

Oohwee.

I wanna tell you one nice story, that at 6:30

this morning, I woke up, and that was

just the time that David was born.

Isn't that amazing?

I didn't even know you remembered the time.

Of course I remember.

What time was I born?

I don't remember.

I'm sorry.

Um—

Does it make you sad to talk about David?

- No. No. - Yeah.

So, I don't know that we've ever been able to figure out

where things went awry for him.

Well, let's not. Let's not.

Okay. Okay.

I mean, he was such a happy little kid. Remember?

Oh, yeah.

My mom and I have talked through all of this for years.

‘Cause he was very jolly.

Why did he do it?

Is there anything we could’ve done?

He was probably like three or four.

He'd run around the table yelling, "No noise! No noise!"

But that's because he'd make noises.

And we'll probably keep chewing it all over forever.

But I've not yet had this conversation with Atlas.

...and run around the table shouting,

"No noise! No..."

Like he was teaching himself, you know?

Trying to remind himself, "I'm not supposed to make noise."

For some reason, he’s still never asked me where Dave is

or what happened to him.

He just accepts that Dave is gone.

I don't know what I would tell him.

I wonder if he senses that and knows not to ask.

My mom is 92, and I joke with her that she has 25 more years

to go before she can be in my movie.

She laughs and says that she's pretty sure

she only has a couple of years left, tops.

I can already feel how much I'll miss her.

Maria Branyas, who holds the claim to be

the oldest person in the world,

passed away last week

at the ripe old age of 117.

In a post on X, her family wrote that she died

in her sleep, at peace and without pain.

Oh, sorry.

Let's run not in the side, but in the middle.

It's July 7th, 2025, today, the day we're filming.

And on this day, there are

8 billion

128 million

190 thousand

331 people on earth.

And the oldest person in the world is?

Ethel Caterham, who lives in a care home

in Surrey, is 115, and is the last Edwardian

still alive in Britain. She was born in August 1909.

It's been 10 years to the day

since we started this project.

And Jesus, I've aged.

That day we filmed Miss Susie's birthday party seems like

a million years ago.

Several lifetimes ago, actually.

Miss Susie, we love you. We love you, Miss Susie.

We love you, Miss Susie.

Say hello to everybody.

Hold up. Say, "Thank you."

Say, "Thank you."

Thank you. I love you too.

I can see now that when I started this project,

I thought I would find words of wisdom from

the oldest people in the world.

And I did find wisdom, although not usually in so many words.

They say that time heals all wounds.

All these years later, I know that's not true.

But time does take the sharp edges off of things.

I still get choked up when I hear that dumb Coldplay song

my brother Dave loved so much,

but there's also joy and pleasure.

I'm still working.

Hi, Sam.

And that drug, daratumumab, is still working too.

And it's still a mystery why.

And I still wake up every single morning thankful to be alive.

And all of the big questions that I asked Sister André,

I realize that maybe this endless project is

as close to an answer as I'm gonna get to build

a monument to the mystery and the heartbreak

and the beauty of it all.

Yeah.

You know I've had the idea to work on this movie

for the rest of my life.

Hopefully, it'll be a long life, and I can do this for a while.

But then when I can't do it anymore, what if Atlas could

take over, and he'd do it for as long as he could?

Hopefully, he'll have a long life too.

And then his kid could take over,

and his or her kid, and so on.

And eventually, it would be this great thing where

people would be like, "Oh, yeah.

The Greens have been documenting the oldest person in the world

for like 200 years now."

I would love that.

So, see you again in 2035.

I hope.

Now hold it. You can see yourself.

Woo hoo.