Eliza Peters has no memory of her past—she’s undergone an experimental procedure to erase her memories as a way of treating her unmanageable, devastating depression. But in order to forge a new life, Eliza is forced to delve into that past, rediscovering all of the crushing memories that she had been so desperate to forget. 

SYNOPSIS:

Anew opens on whorling colours, bright images, vivid maps of the human brain. Sleek medical devices scan Eliza Peters’s head as she lays unconscious in a bed in the Mnemosyne Clinical Research Facility. When she comes to, she learns that she’s undergone a new surgical procedure to cure her depression by erasing her memories: Doctor-Assisted Cognitive Suicide or DACS is an experimental treatment in therapeutic amnesia. Dr. Traynor, the researcher who developed the procedure, offers Eliza the chance at a fresh start—a $250,000 honorarium to complete the study. Eliza is eager to start anew, to experience the world, to find joy and excitement. But to earn the money, Eliza has to undergo tests to prove that the treatment is successful: she must investigate her past, watching videos of her former life, as Dr. Traynor tests her reactions to everything she’s been programmed to forget.

Eliza plunges into the outside world, experiencing it as if for the first time: the lights, the sounds, the business of life outside the clinic is almost overwhelming to her at first. But she soon seeks out the vibrancy of life outside the clinic. At the same time, she has to earn her new beginning by completing the tests to prove that she isn’t who she used to be. Dr. Traynor is encouraged at the success of the procedure. She’s excited to begin offering DACS to new patients, and to develop other therapeutic amnesia procedures for new markets. Under Dr. Traynor’s supervision, Eliza excavates her past, learning more about her history of depression, the choices that she made that hurt her and the people who loved her. Eliza is repelled by who she was: depressed, hopeless, selfish. She condemns her pre-procedure self for her bad choices, but she doesn’t want to take responsibility for mistakes she doesn’t remember making. As she revisits her old life, she launches herself into new experiences, new relationships, new chances for happiness.

But Eliza has to face the fallout from her past decisions as she meets the people who mattered most to her—people who were almost as crushed by her depression as she was. When she meets her husband Marc and their son Zach, she realizes that she’s connected to them in a way that she can’t just walk away from. As she experiments with a new life, she struggles to make sense of the past and what it means to her now. But her old life and the new collide when Eliza accidentally puts Zach in serious danger by taking him with her on a date with an alluring stranger. Marc is furious. Eliza begs him to forgive her mistake, but Marc sees this episode as part of a pattern of selfish and irresponsible behaviour that’s marked Eliza’s whole life. He promises Eliza will never see Zach again, and he alludes to a dark secret. Eliza seeks out the truth, discovering a terrible crime, and the real reason that she decided to end her life and ultimately, that drove her to sign up for the amnesia therapy trial.

Now, Eliza must figure out how to take responsibility for the horrible mistakes that she can’t even remember making. And she has to face the dark nature of Dr. Traynor’s plans: the insidious applications in the works to market DACS and therapeutic amnesia to new patients, reprogramming and redeploying emotionally damaged soldiers, erasing the memory of unforgivable crimes, even unsavoury histories... for the right price. Can Eliza take the money and start a new life if it means that Dr. Traynor will go on performing the procedure to make people forget their dark histories at the expense of their presents, and of the people who have been impacted by their mistakes?

Anew is a rich, character-driven sci-fi drama in the vein of Ex Machina and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.