Eternal You Documentary Film Review

My parents died within a couple years of each other when I was in my mid-20s. They never saw me become a film critic, even though they inspired my earliest love of movies. They never saw me become a parent myself, and my dad didn’t even get a chance to meet my husband.  

There’s so much I wish I could tell them, so much I wish I could show them about the life I’ve built since then. And it’s exactly that sense of longing that the deeply creepy documentary “Eternal You” explores.  

German writer-directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck investigate the use of artificial intelligence to create avatars of the dead. Some companies, like Project December, give their clients the sensation that they’re having lengthy, online message exchanges with their loved ones through ChatGPT. Others replicate a deceased person’s voice or facial expressions. The saddest example of all features a grieving Korean mother who enters a virtual reality simulation with the 7-year-old daughter she lost to an illness.  The little girl frolics in a park in a pink dress and asks sweetly, “Mom, am I pretty?” as the mother sobs beneath her bulky headset. 

Is this a ghoulish and exploitative practice? Or a compassionate means of providing closure? “Eternal You” remains neutral on the subject, instead offering a wide array of experiences and perspectives. It neglects to mention the range of how much these services cost, which seems like a glaring omission. But make no mistake: This is a capitalist pursuit. No one is creating these high-tech simulations out of the kindness of their hearts, and in at least one instance in the film, a woman is left on a cliffhanger ending in a “conversation” with her first love when he tells her he’s in hell. She can ask him more questions about that–for a price. 

But even she acknowledges, “Nobody has to know I did it.” So, if these AI avatars are giving people the comfort that they’re truly talking with their loved ones once more, and saying all the things they wish they’d said when those people were still on Earth, what’s the harm? The users marvel at how uncanny these recreations are: They look and sound exactly like the people they’re trying to reach, even in the tone and word choice of text exchanges. That’s how eerily accurate AI can be now. 

But beyond the emotional element, “Eternal You” raises intriguing ethical questions about this burgeoning use of technology. Sherry Turkle, a sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is essential in soberly articulating these quandaries. What if the dead wouldn’t have wanted to be resurrected in this manner? What happens to all the personal data these companies collect? And what are the long-term repercussions of recreating people’s likenesses? In New Zealand, we see Soul Machines co-founder Mark Sagar using his own baby as the basis for an AI prototype. How will his kid feel about that down the road?  

Most of the tech bros, like Justin Harrison of You, Only Virtual, come off as flippant in justifying pushing the technology in this fashion. By allowing people to hold into the past, they’re simply embracing the future, they’re saying. But is that the healthiest way to grieve?  

Regardless of where you fall on the issue, “Eternal You” is undeniably beautiful, with artful cinematography from Tom Bergmann and Konrad Waldmann that creates an air of mystery from the very beginning. Similarly, the score from Gregor Keienbeurg and Raffael Seyfried adds a fittingly haunting mood. 

As for me, I’ll steer clear of the digital afterlife and revisit some of my parents’ favorite movies instead. That’s how I’ll keep their memory alive. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here.

Eternal You

Documentary
star rating star rating
87 minutes 2025
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