After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck’s documentary “Eternal You” is set to be theatrical released by Dogwoof in the U.K. and Farbfilm in Germany.
The buzzed-about documentary explores ways that AI is being used by help people cope with grief, allowing them to interact with avatars of their deceased loved ones. Dogwoof, which is repping worldwide sales, is negotiating a U.S. deal and sales in other territories. “Eternal You” is now premiering at CPH:DOX in Denmark.
Block and Riesewieck also examine the moral and emotional ramifications of this segment of the digital afterlife industry, as well as the ethics of startup companies which are using AI to create digital replicas of the dead.
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“Eternal You” is produced by Davis Guggenheim’s Concordia Studio, Julie Goldman and Chris Clements’ Motto Pictures, Christian Beetz and Georg Tschurtschenthaler’s Beetz Brothers, as well as Jenny Raskin’s Impact Partners.
Speaking to Variety prior to Sundance, the directing duo said they started working on “Eternal You” in 2018 after coming across a website inviting users to “become virtually immortal.”
“Moritz and I discovered a void that hundreds of millions people feel,” said Block. “They can no longer believe in the promise of life after death with God, the religious rites of mourning have become meaningless to them. Tech companies are trying to fill this void with a new promise of salvation: the idea that we humans no longer need to mourn because we can keep the dead alive virtually.”
“By making this film, Hans and I wanted to understand why people recognize their loved ones in avatars, what makes the simulations of the dead so deceptive,” said Riesewieck. The pair made their debut with “The Cleaners” which bowed at Sundance in 2018.
