At the edge of Shirahama, a coastal tourist town in Japan, an ageing scientist works to unlock the biological secret of immortality held in the life cycle of a tiny jellyfish. At a temple in Kyoto, a Zen priest contemplates the metaphysical immortality held within a single breath.
A few years after reading an article in The New York Times by Nathaniel Rich titled ‘Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?’, filmmaker Spencer Macdonald travelled to Shirahama to meet Dr. Shin Kubota, a warm and eccentric scientist determined to harness the biological secrets of a jellyfish for humanity.
Whilst in Japan, however, Macdonald, alongside the film’s producer Dalia Burde and creative director Amana King were also searching for a perspective to counter Shin’s desire to live forever. “Our translator, Bodhi, suggested Koju Kaji, the Abbess of a 600-year-old temple in Kyoto. Luckily, she agreed and shared with us a few hours of her time. And the rest is history, so they say.”
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