Review: ‘The Oldest Person in the World’ takes a ramshackle approach toward life and death
2026 / Dir. Sam Green / 2026 Sundance Film Festival
Rating: 4/5
Watch if you like: those new stories about how the oldest person in the world got so old by drinking Dr. Pepper every day while contemplating your own mortality and family trauma.
Documentarian Sam Green (32 Sounds, The Weather Underground) embarks on a journey to interview each current “oldest person in the world” over the course of ten years, after attending a public birthday in 2015 down the street from his apartment for “Miss Susie”—the last American woman to be born in the 1800s—while noting the absurdity of all the pomp and circumstance for a woman who sleeps through the entire ceremony.
Full of quirky and often touching encounters—like a moment where Green doesn’t know what to do during an awkward moment in Italy when the translator steps out of the room, so he and the 115-year-old woman he’s interviewing hold hands in silence—The Oldest Person in the World is really about Green’s reflection of his own life. During the course of the ten years spent filming, he has a child, has a life-or-death health scare, and confronts the loss of his brother and father. Green admittedly didn’t know what he was after by making this documentary, but I found his musings and ramshackle approach quite endearing, and I looked forward to meeting the next-oldest person, even as I understood that it meant the previous record holder had to pass away. Such is life.