Why do we care who the oldest person in the world is? It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. It feels like they’re always around the same age. But if there’s an article about it, I’m going to speak for us all and say, we’re clicking on it. First of all, we gotta see what they look like. Second, we want to know if they got to this age by living a healthy, active lifestyle or if they’re one of these cases where they smoke like Don Draper and eat a bloody steak everyday. Will they reinforce our bad habits or will they be a cause for change in our daily lives? It all boils down to a morbid curiosity. It’s part of pondering our own mortality. What director Sam Green offers with The Oldest Person in the World is a decade of him doing the same.
Green is the Brooklyn-based documentarian and Sundance veteran known for his ‘live documentaries’ where a film is screened with live narration and music. In 2014, Green made The Measure of All Things, a documentary inspired by the world’s favorite novelty publication, the Guinness Book of World Records. A year later, Green attended the birthday party for Miss Susie, the then title holder for oldest person in the world at the very respectable age of 116. After her death, he visits 117-year-old Emma Morano in Italy. After her death, he visits 117-year-old Violet Brown in Jamaica.
As the Guinness Book of World Records confirms, the title holder for this superlative changes quite frequently; and when it does, Green books a plane ticket to interview them. Each woman (they’re all women) gets their own brief profile. These profiles aren’t intended as obituaries, but end up as something similar, only greater. What separates them from a standard obituary is Green’s approach, which feels intimate and personal.
Green narrates and appears in the film, speaking from the first person point-of-view; much like a Radiolab segment. When he visits his subjects, he speaks with them (sometimes through a narrator) but also observes them and even holds their hand in quiet co-existence. He supplements the interviews with these personal moments. It’s here that his film crosses the line from a mere collection of segments to something more. He humanizes these figures whom most of the world only ever knows as curiosities. He adds depth and dignity to their “oldest” titles, or at least as much as a visit can.
Green is as interested in exploring life as he is death. A parallel narrative to the succession of record holders is his own life and family. He visits the location of his brother’s suicide as he continues to reconcile with the tragic event. He also shares with us his diagnosis and treatment of myeloma. We see him age during the 10 years of production and we watch his son Atlas grow. His son’s inclusion underscores this child-like dependence people return to when they become elderly, as we see with the way his subjects are cared for. When Green feels the film is getting too heavy, he inserts a “seventh-inning stretch” montage to offer the viewer a break. It feels unnecessary but, as he is sharing so much of himself, perhaps it’s more for him than it is for us.
The Oldest Person in the World offers no answers or conclusions, which is what it seems many are looking for in these stories. ‘What’s their secret’ is the most common question asked of these women as they become elevated to philosophers. They never have a straight answer but they always offer some morsel or wisdom they’ve derived from their century-plus on the planet. Kane Tanaka has learned not to dwell on the negatives (and continued to crush cans of Coke ‘till the end) whereas Emma Morano had one piece of advice: stay away from men. In fact, the film presents its own set of questions to the viewer. Do you even want to live to be this old? Green is offered a piece of advice: “You are young and now is the time to do good work,” and that is perhaps as straightforward an answer as we can all hope for on mortality.
The concept of life and death is so ubiquitous, it feels impersonal––more objective than subjective. The Oldest Person in the World takes that theme and succeeds in presenting it from an individual perspective; a personal statement. Green shares that he hopes to continue the project of documenting the oldest person in the world in perpetuity. He hopes one day his son will take over future installments and his children after that. It’s a solid plan since one person is always going to be the oldest in the world, and we’re going to want to know about it.
The Oldest Person in the World premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.