116 And Counting? Award-Winning Filmmaker Sam Green’s Latest Documents ‘The Oldest Person In The World’
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- Sam Green's documentary "The Oldest Person in the World" opens September 10 at Angelika Film Center in New York, September 18 in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, with nationwide expansion to follow, distributed by Assembly Releasing.
- The film profiles 116-year-old Ethel May Caterham, born in 1909 in Shipton Bellinger, Hampshire, England, who turns 117 on August 21, as the current holder of the world's oldest living person title.
- Green describes the project as a decade-long odyssey tracking the ever-changing record holders; the film premiered at Sundance and screened at SXSW, True/False, DC/DOX, Hot Docs, CPH:DOX, and the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival.
- Green was Oscar-nominated in 2004 for "The Weather Underground," shortlisted in 2023 for "32 Sounds," and previously examined Guinness World Records in his 2014 feature "The Measure of All Things."
- In an IDA Documentary interview, Green said he abandoned an initial "kooky old people" concept after realizing supercentenarians mostly "want to have a snack and take a nap," prompting him to film his young son Atlas Galasso Green as a counterpoint exploring time.
- Green and his core team plan to keep filming the oldest person alive for the rest of their lives, releasing a new film every ten years to create an ever-evolving "living film" whose form mirrors the unpredictability of existence.
Why it matters: Green is betting that the world's oldest person is a renewable subject worth a lifetime of filmmaking, with a planned new film every decade. The release lands as Caterham, the current titleholder, approaches 117, giving distributors a news peg that the sequential documentaries will need to match or surpass each time the title passes.
