Would you trade years of your life in order to get rich and stay young? It’s a highly problematic hypothetical, one that stares down society’s obsession with youth, and one that sits at the core of Netflix’s upcoming sci-fi Paradise.
Directed by Boris Kunz, the film has a very Black Mirror-style premise set in the near future. A biotech startup called AEON, where Max (Kostja Ullmann) works, has made it big by creating a “time donation program” for giving up years of your life for another person to use. In return, you get paid and become “rejuvenated” with youth.
The problem is, you can’t control who gets those years of your life — and it seems billionaires are the ones buying them. And the now billion-dollar pharmaceutical company has the ability to take people’s years as payment for outstanding debts — and Max’s wife Elena (Marlene Tanzcik) is a target.
“Those who make lifetime a commodity make people a commodity,” one anti-AEON activist says, and it certainly seems to be the case.
How to watch: Paradise is streaming on Netflix from July 27.(opens in a new tab)
