When a girl from Thailand with brain cancer died in 2015 and her medical engineer parents made the decision to cryogenically freeze her brain in a United States facility, the story made news globally, as the girl is the youngest person in the world to have her brain preserved for future reanimation using the still unproven technology.
For Thai filmmaker Pailin Wedel, who has made a documentary about the family’s quest to bring their child back to life, the real story happened after the fact. “My film follows the emotional journey of the girl’s brother and parents, who saw it as their duty to do everything in their power to give their daughter a chance of life. What happens to them after they made that decision?” says Wedel.
The 75-minute feature Hope Frozen portrays the emotional struggle of parents Sahatorn and Nareerat Naovaratpong who, as Buddhists, have to contend with the religious, ethical and medical repercussions of their decision, and the quest by the girl’s brother Matrix, a science prodigy, to find out whether the science can bring his beloved sister back to life one day.
The girl, Matheryin, or Einz as her family nicknamed her, suffered from a rare form of brain cancer and died before she turned three. She was put into a deeply frozen state at the point of her death in Thailand.
Wedel learned about the story after international media reported that Einz’s remains were transported from Thailand to Alcor, a non-profit organisation based in the US state of Arizona which embraces cryonics, the experimental procedure that uses ultra-cold temperature to preserve the remains of someone who has died in the hope of reviving them one day when the technology becomes advanced enough to do so.
After her body arrived at Alcor, her brain was taken out and preserved at a temperature of -196 degrees Celsius (-321 Fahrenheit). She was Alcor’s 134th patient, and at the time its youngest. The idea is to create a new body for her in the future when the technology matures.
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Speaking to the Post from her Bangkok home via Zoom, Wedel says her American journalist husband helped her discover the story. “The story went viral in Thailand. My husband wanted to do a story on them. Although he speaks great Thai, he was worried that he might not be able to translate some of the technical terms into Thai, so he asked me to come along to help him with translation. I was reluctant at first.”
But what was supposed to be a 20-minute conversation with them turned into a chat about their lives, Buddhism and philosophy of more than an hour. “Both parents have PhDs in medical engineering. They are very knowledgeable and passionate and honest about their feelings. This is a really special family,” says the director.
Hope Frozen is the first feature-length film of Wedel, a freelance videographer for various media including Al Jazeera English, The New York Times and National Geographic. She secured funding for the film from Bilibili, China’s answer to YouTube, and the Whickers, which funds innovative original documentaries.
The film will be broadcast exclusively by Bilibili in China. Netflix bought the rights to its overseas distribution after it won numerous international awards, including Best International Feature Documentary at the 2019 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. The win at the largest documentary festival in North America qualified Hope Frozen for consideration by the Academy Awards.
Wedel says the critical reception was unexpected. “I applied to probably 14 funding bodies all around the world and didn’t get any of them.”
The film took her five years to make. A biology graduate herself, Wedel says she did much scientific research on the technology, and presents the opposing views of scientists who support and disagree with cryonics.
“I’ve seen rehearsals of the whole procedure. I’ve talked to a number of people at Alcor and those who disagree with Alcor. But this isn’t a science film about cryonics. If [people] want to watch a science film, both the National Geographic and Discovery channels have films like that.
“It’s more like a fiction film where I followed the life of a young boy and his family. There is a pair of parents who have lost their child. I think anybody who has lost a loved one would identify with that.”
While the first half of the film focuses on the parents, its second half captures the dogged quest by Matrix to find out the real odds of his sister coming back to life again.
“Matrix is a genius teenager. Two years into filming, I went with him to the US when he was 16 years old [to interview] scientist Robert McIntyre, who is the first person [in the world] to prove that a brain that is cryonically preserved can remain intact,” Wedel explains.
“With all the synapses being there, [it is hoped] that one day the technology will be good enough to scan these brains that have been preserved, collect the data, and create the consciousness again.”
“Matrix was already doing much research on the possibilities [of reviving his sister], so he was extremely excited [about the US trip] where he met several scientists. [Before his sister’s death], while still in high school, he worked in a research lab [at a Thai] university, doing chemotherapy tests and helping [researchers] propagate cells [in the hope of] finding a cure for his sister’s cancer.”
Without going into details, Wedel says the climax of the film concerns the Skype meeting Matrix has with his parents in Thailand after meeting the scientists in the US. “It’s a difficult and emotional conversation. It is the most truth-telling [part] of the film.”
Matrix’s revelation after meeting the scientists led to a reawakening in his family regarding the real prospects of the technology.
With the film portraying a Thai family at the cutting edge of medical science, and showcasing hi-tech medical labs in the subtropical country, Wedel says she wants to show Thailand as a place of the future.
“A lot of the lab shots show all the technology that we have,” she says. “I [have long been] frustrated with the [news] stories that are coming out of Thailand [which are all about] red-light districts, human trafficking, political turmoil and beautiful beaches.
“You rarely see stories like [Hope Frozen] coming out of Thailand. When’s the last time you saw a story about a Thai scientist?
“[I want to show that] people in Thailand are also deep thinkers about faith and technology. We also have scientists here. We also think about what the future may bring.”
Hope Frozen starts streaming on Netflix and Bilibili on September 15.
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This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Struggle to put faith in medical science
