Live Beyond — Father and Son on a Quest for Longevity.
A feature documentary. Premiere planned for Q1 2027, with streaming to follow.
It began as a question between a father and a 17-year-old son: if the science of living longer is real, who actually knows about it — and would they talk to us?
So we went. On 15 August 2023 we left for a year on the road: 39 countries and states, 5 continents, and more than 100 of the people building longevity. We filmed 165 interviews.
We sat with George Church at Harvard, with Eric Verdin at the Buck Institute, with Brian Kennedy and Andrea Maier in Singapore, with Liz Parrish in Seattle and Craig Venter in San Diego. We walked Los Angeles with Peter Diamandis. We met Robert Waldinger in a cemetery, because he thought it was the right place to talk about how we live.
And we went where the science does not reach: the Blue Zones of Okinawa and Sardinia, a healer’s courtyard in Ubud, a Shipibo ceremony in Peru. Longevity is not only a laboratory subject, and the film does not pretend it is.
Most of them did not give us a press interview. They invited us into their homes and their labs, fed us, and kept talking after the camera stopped. Formal interviews grew into friendships, and that intimacy is what the film is made of.
Aleksander narrates it. That was a deliberate choice. If a teenager can follow this science and find it exciting, so can anyone — and the person who learned it in front of the camera is a better guide than the person who already knew.
The film carries the Longevity Map, so what you watch and what you read describe the same world. And underneath the science it is about something simpler: two people who chose to spend a year of their lives together, and what that did to them.
It is not out yet. The premiere is planned for the first quarter of 2027, opening the Live Beyond cinematic universe — a film a year, each one a different door into longevity.
“I wanna watch your movie, and then I’ll be so inspired and drop everything and go on a road trip, you know.”
Steve Horvath
Inventor of the epigenetic clocks
Dublin · August 2023
“I hope that you have great success in this first journey because this is first journey of many.”
Liz Parrish
CEO, BioViva
Dublin · August 2023
What is inside
One film, five layers — and you feel all of them.
It begins as a quest for longevity and becomes about everything else. Roughly 80% of it is emotion and relationship and 20% is science, which is the only way a film about ageing reaches somebody who would never watch a film about ageing.
01
A quest for longevity
Clinics, labs and the scientists redefining what is possible.
The Buck Institute, CaliforniaFull-body MRI, San FranciscoDiagnostics at the longevity centreThe AI lab, Shanghai
02
A father and son, growing closer
Two generations, one year on the road, and a relationship that had to change.
Diving together, BaliThe hard conversations, BostonLake TahoeWith the centenarians, Okinawa
03
Nature, and the cultures that live in it
Five continents of raw beauty — which is the thing we are all doing this for.
New ZealandThe sequoias, CaliforniaThe temple, BaliPeru
04
A rite of passage
Alek was 17 when we left and turned 18 on the road. He narrates it at 19 — stepping into adulthood beside his father, learning the world and its people.
Alek interviewing at HarvardNew ZealandArizona
05
A film about making a film
The quest is also its own crew: Alek teaching himself to shoot as we travelled, still shooting a year later, and the two of us in the edit putting the story together.
Alek on a beach in New Zealand, learning it as we wentA year later, filming a wall in MiamiCutting the story together, in the edit
The voice
Narrated by a 19-year-old.
I am the main character; my son tells the story. It is a deliberate choice rather than a sentimental one — if a teenager who started out sceptical can fall in love with this, the audience believes they can too. He lowers the barrier and models curiosity instead of expertise.
He literally walks you through it, tracing the quest on a map night after night.
Alek narrating, and tracing the quest on the map
Two maps
Two maps run through the film.
1 · The world map
The one we travel — an orange ribbon leading from place to place around the globe, stop by stop, so you always know where you are.
2 · The Longevity Map
The helicopter view of the whole field, built as we went. It is also the backbone of everything that comes after the film.
This film will help decide what the word means for a great many people, so the definition comes from the people who actually know — in real conversations, on their own ground, not talking-head lectures. It draws on more than 100 filmed interviews and shows less than one per cent of what we learned. This one is the pilot.
“Well, I thought meeting in the cemetery was appropriate because you’re studying longevity and how we live, and it’s really helpful to be reminded of how beautiful it can be to be in a graveyard.”
Robert Waldinger
Director, the Harvard Study of Adult Development
Boston · November 2024
“I’m trying to get sitting classified as an occupational hazard, like radiation.”
Sir Muir Gray
Prevention pioneer, Oxford
Oxford · July 2024
“I think what people have a hard time imagining that you can help them imagine is they don’t know what to do with the extra time.”
Produced by Lead The Waves, my production studio and brand practice. Two decades of brand-building now serving the mission — telling the stories that move the longevity movement forward.
Get the Map. It is free, and it is the whole field on one page.
The Longevity Map will guide you to a longer, healthier and more fulfilling life. It gives you a helicopter view on all branches of the longevity field.
