Death as an act of creation.
Why it is hard sci-fi
A film about mortality told across three time frames. One is a near-future neuroscience lab where a researcher is searching for a cancer treatment in compounds derived from a Mayan tree. That thread is procedural and uses real lab cadence. The other threads are stylised and not science. The films rigour lives in the lab scenes and in the films refusal to extend life as a free benefit.
Science inside it
Phytochemistry of bark-derived compounds, primate trials, and the trade-offs of a single-target oncology trial under a personal deadline. The film also engages, more loosely, with the question of what extending life would do to a relationship that depends on a finite shared horizon.