Bettencourt Schueller Foundation
presents
A GoodPlanet Foundation
project
With the participation of
France Tlvisions
A film by
Yann Arthus-Bertrand
I remember...
my stepfather
would beat me with extension cords
and hangers,
pieces of wood
and all kinds of stuff.
He would tell me:
"It hurt me more than you.
"I only did it, because I love you."
It communicated the wrong message
to me about what love was.
So, for many years,
I thought
that love was supposed to hurt.
I hurt everyone that I loved.
And I measured love
by how much pain
someone would take from me.
And it wasn't until I came to prison,
an environment
that is devoid of love,
that I began to have
some understanding
about what it actually
was and was not.
I met someone.
She gave me my first real insight
into what love was.
She saw past my condition
and the fact that I was in prison
with a life sentence
for doing the worst kind of murder
that a man can do:
murdering a woman and a child.
It was Agnes,
the mother and grandmother of...
Patricia and Chris, that I murdered,
who gave me
my best lesson about love.
By all rights, she should hate me.
But she didn't.
Over the course of time,
through the journey that we took,
it has been pretty amazing,
she gave me love.
She taught me what it was.
I'm very happy when it rains,
when I drink milk
and I have a good life.
When I put on weight.
I'm thin now.
When it rains,
I am very happy.
When I drink milk
and I eat everything I like.
And when I sleep with the man I love
who says sweet things to me.
And when I am in a nice hut
that protects me
from the cold and rain.
Those are the things
that make me happy.
Happiness, for us,
would be...
having food,
a small piece of land
and a real place to live,
with electricity day and night.
We wouldn't have to sleep
in the dark.
That would be happiness.
But we sleep on the floor,
without even a mat, on straw.
With electricity,
there would be light
in my children's lives.
So,
as I had
a difficult childhood
without any money,
when I went to university,
I got a grant
and I bought myself a motorbike.
Brand-new!
I was the first person
to start it up.
I was the first person to get on it
to go home.
When I feel the wind
whipping me as I ride along,
knowing that I'm not
on someone else's motorbike.
It's my very own motorbike.
I arrived home,
and to get to sleep,
I put the bike in my bedroom
and I locked myself in with it.
That way, I could smell
the hot engine.
The smell of the engine,
the new bike smell.
And when I turned the light on,
I could see it was my very own bike.
I couldn't put the bike
on the bed, under the covers,
but it's what I wanted to do.
Yes...
I felt it. Yes.
That was a moment
of great happiness for me.
Happiness
is the children coming home.
That's a mother's happiness.
It's when my husband
comes home, smiles,
and kisses me,
after 33 years of married life.
That's a woman's happiness.
Happiness is hearing
my grandchildren saying: "Grandma!"
When they say that, you feel older,
but that's happiness, too.
It's also meeting colleagues
who are happy to see you.
They think:
"She's here, let's talk."
That's happiness, too.
It's getting up in the morning
and not hurting anywhere.
That's happiness, too.
It's the rain which is the promise
of a good harvest.
There are many kinds of happiness,
but at the same time,
there's only one:
you're alive, so you're happy.
Just my experiences
from being in a wheelchair
and traveling the world
in a wheelchair
I've seen life from a different angle
and that's taught me
on a spiritual level
to just accept and to be happy,
whatever's coming next.
I'm so mentally strong.
The only reason is because
of losing my legs physically.
My eyesight's sharper, my ears are...
I can hear much better.
So, that's on a physical sense, but
I feel I'm lucky, as in
I don't analyze
or question life too much.
I can cruise through life
and always be
in the right place at the right time.
I always have amazing things
happen to me.
I'm really lucky in that situation.
But that comes from believing in luck
or believing
in the power of attraction
or believing in
attracting the goodness
into one's life.
And I think
that can be seen as luck.
So, if God Himself
jumped down in front of me right now
and said to me:
"Bruno, I'll give you back your legs,
"but I'll take away all that
you've learned in the last 13 years."
I'll tell God: "Keep your legs."
We didn't use to die like today.
We lived in peace.
Our fighting didn't kill us.
There was only one gun per village.
What decimates us is the Kalashnikov.
Before, we only died
from sickness and disease.
A few people died:
a sick person, an old man, a baby.
Only the weak.
The victims of the Kalashnikov
are countless.
Our fighting is degenerating.
3 men die from one shot.
Yesterday, people died.
We didn't bury them.
Maybe animals ate them.
That weapon is bad.
It deprives the young generation
and the country
of peace.
As soon as I took up arms,
I felt fear.
Fear is a human feeling.
I was afraid of blood.
When I took up arms,
I went from being a teacher
to a man of arms.
I had no choice.
I saw and experienced things
which forced me to do it.
Sometimes my son asks me,
because it worries him:
"Dad, why this war?
Is there no end to it?
"Why do you kill the soldier?
"Doesn't the soldier have a family
"waiting for him, just like us?"
I say to him:
"He's wrong and we're right."
"Why, Dad?"
I say:
"He kills families and children.
"He destroys mosques.
"We defend all that."
We always try to be clear
to the children.
We tell them that we took up arms,
because we had to,
not because we wanted to.
I don't like having blood
on my hands...
or the idea that I killed someone.
Nobody likes that.
I'm not afraid of death.
I'm not afraid if it's for Syria.
I'm not afraid if it's for my father.
If he wasn't dead,
I would be afraid of death.
But I'm no longer afraid.
Even if my throat is cut
or I get blown up.
What matters is joining my father
or going back to Syria.
During the genocide...
I was separated from my parents
and I lived alone
in the sorghum fields.
I spent at least two weeks there.
Then,
someone took me.
She asked me who I was.
But as I was very little,
I couldn't distinguish
between Hutus and Tutsis.
I didn't really know.
She looked at me and started touching
my fingers, my skin.
She told me I was a Tutsi
or mixed race.
She told people to shoot me,
to eliminate me.
I asked why,
what I'd done wrong.
After that,
there was a lot of shooting.
I ran away.
All along the way,
there were corpses and blood.
Then I sat down and asked God
that His will be done.
I was lucky to survive.
I went home.
The door was smashed in.
In front, there was a hole
where a shell had fallen.
I went in
and found my father lying there.
I saw my brothers too, behind him.
My father
had opened the door to them.
He told them
there were no combatants.
They told him to step forward.
My mother and brothers were lined up.
"Join them."
As soon as he moved,
they started shooting.
He got a bullet in the back.
He fell.
They started shooting at my brothers.
At the time of the massacre,
in 1982, I was a young student.
I didn't hate anyone,
I felt no hatred.
But that massacre
made me question many things.
I asked myself:
"Who loves me? Who hates me?
"Why did this happen?"
I thought more about it
and all that brought about in me
a love of hatred,
a love of vengeance.
Man isn't born with those feelings.
They grow
over the course of your experiences.
Both love and hatred.
Would you forgive me
if I kill your father or brother?
If no law stands in my way?
If your rights are scorned?
Would you forgive me
if I'd killed your brother,
father or mother?
No, certainly not.
No way.
I will never forgive.
Even if my head is cut off.
One evening, while in the reserves,
my unit had to stop a suicide attack
by capturing a terrorist
in a village near Nablus.
I deployed our forces.
To flush him out,
we shot at the walls
as a demonstration of strength.
A woman came out of the house,
carrying a girl
and holding another by the hand.
It was 3 AM.
The girl panicked and ran toward us.
I was afraid she'd blow herself up.
I yelled at her in Arabic to stop.
She kept coming.
I fired above her head.
She stopped.
At that moment, time stood still.
It was the shortest
and the longest moment
of my life.
The girl remained alive.
And so did I.
But at the same time,
something died
in us both.
When a child is shot at,
it kills something inside.
I don't know what.
When an adult shoots at a child,
it kills something inside.
Something dies
and something else
has to come to life.
I was ashamed of shooting at her.
A painful shame.
And above all, this sensation
of my finger
pressing the trigger
and shooting at the girl.
From this finger pressing the trigger
something had to come to life.
One of the most impactful things
that will occur,
after being in combat,
is the feeling
of killing another human being.
Once you've experienced it,
you'll see
that it's not like anything else
that you've experienced before.
And unfortunately,
that feeling,
your body will want
to experience again.
It's really difficult
to try to explain to somebody
what that feeling's like.
Right now,
I still feel like experiencing
that again,
and it's probably why I keep
a loaded weapon in my house.
I yearn or desire for someone
to try to hurt me
or to break in
or to give me an excuse
to use that violence
against somebody else again.
On the 16th of January 2007,
an Israeli border policeman
shot and killed
my 10-year-old daughter, Abir,
in front of her school
in Anath where I live.
She was with her sister
and two friends.
9.30 in the morning.
In her head in the back
from a distance of 15 to 20 meters
by a rubber bullet.
Abir wasn't a fighter.
She was just
a child.
She didn't know anything
about the conflict
and she was not part
of this conflict.
Unfortunately, she lost her life
because she was a Palestinian.
I'm an Israeli who lost his daughter
to a suicide bombing
on the 4th of September 1997.
And I am a product of...
of an education system.
These are two societies at war.
They socialize the young generation
to make them able to sacrifice
themselves when the time comes.
This is true to Palestinian society
and this is also true
to Israeli society.
Because we are human beings.
Sometimes you think:
"If I kill the killer
"or anyone from the other side,
from the Israelis,
"or maybe ten,
"this will give me back my daughter."
No.
I'll cause another pain
and another victim to the others.
I decided
to break this circle of violence
and blood and revenge
by stopping killing
and supporting revenge,
by myself.
My definition of "sides"
has changed dramatically.
Today, on my side are
all those who want peace and are
willing to pay the price of peace.
On the other side
are those who do not want peace
and are not willing
to pay the price of peace.
Many people told me:
"It's not your right
to forgive in her name."
And the answer:
it's also not my right
to seek revenge in her name.
I hope she's satisfied.
I hope she rests in peace.
Here's what happened:
a German officer
in an SS uniform
entered the ghetto
one rainy night.
My mother told him:
"Take my daughter."
She lifted the wire fence
and handed him her baby, me,
a Jewish girl
2 and a half years old.
And with a heavy heart,
she put me in the hands
of a wonderful man
in an SS uniform.
I now know that this man,
Alois Pleva,
served in the German army
and lived near the German border.
This man put me in his coat.
He hid me inside his coat
and took me
to the border
between Germany and Poland
to his parents.
They passed me off as his daughter.
They raised me
in the purest Catholic tradition
until the end of the war.
What a gesture!
What magic,
this outstretched hand!
Like sparks of light
in what we call human folly.
Sometimes a question comes to mind.
If I had been
in a situation like that,
would I have acted in the same way
as that German officer?
How can I answer
such a question?
I don't think I would have had
the moral strength to do it,
in all honesty.
Maybe.
Did he know he had the strength?
How can you know?
How can you recognize
the moment of truth
when you can sacrifice yourself,
sacrifice the only life you have
for someone else?
There's no answer to that question.
Or a question
others can answer.
But this question must be asked.
Love is the beginning and the end.
Love is where we come from,
where we're going
and what we live between the two.
Love is everything.
Love.
The word love
is full of meaning for me.
When you talk about love,
it encompasses everything.
Love encompasses everything,
doesn't it?
Where there's no love, you feel empty
or rather, I feel empty.
Love...
Love is what fills the soul.
You have to take love
one day at a time.
You live it every day.
Love is this feeling that you can
give
and that the other person gives you.
My wife has a strong character.
She's the one who guides the family.
I love her a lot.
She's magnificent.
If you don't make love,
your love will be a failure.
Do you hear? Why?
Through love comes sex.
Without sex, you'll go wrong.
Your wife will ask herself:
"He gives me love, but not sex.
"Love, food, clothing, everything,
"but not sex.
"What can I do with this man?"
What will happen to our home?
The home will collapse,
because after love must come sex.
And that's ultimately
why love exists.
Otherwise, there's nothing.
Oh, wow!
What a question to ask me...
If I've had lovers?
To be honest, I've never had any.
I haven't...
I went to parties,
but I didn't go to dances, because,
to tell you the truth,
I never learned to dance.
I tried, but it didn't work.
So, I gave up.
When you marry someone,
you marry them as they are.
At a given moment,
you love them the way they are.
I had an accident.
I lost my arms and legs.
She didn't marry a guy
with no arms or legs.
But she stood it
for a number of years.
We ended up separating,
we got a divorce.
I had to start a new life.
It took me 3 years
to get over the break-up.
After 3 years, I said to myself:
"You can't stay on your own!"
So, I signed up on the internet
to a dating site.
At first, I just put a head shot.
The rest was a surprise.
I didn't show I had no arms or legs.
I had fun on the net,
but when I told people
about my handicap,
nobody answered me.
So, I announced my handicap
and one day, I met Suzanna.
There we are, love is possible.
We've been together for 8 years.
Suzanna has 3 girls, I have 2 boys.
We have a one-eyed dog,
4 cats, a guinea-pig.
It's one big reconstituted family.
Anything's possible.
I found love again.
And we really love each other.
I've been married to my husband
for 18 years now.
He has never said, "I love you,"
but I feel he does.
Sometimes,
eyes speak more than mouths.
When I was younger, I wondered
how people could live together
for so long,
without falling out of love.
I also couldn't imagine how people
could sleep
in the same bed for 20 years.
I thought it would be boring.
But it's not!
Every day,
I think,
"Yesterday, my love was weaker.
"Today, it's true love."
And then, a year goes by.
This love becomes even stronger.
When I go to bed at night,
I look at him and think,
if he died,
I could never replace him.
After being married for...
50 years, 49...
51 years.
My wife took seriously ill
just before we celebrated
our 50th wedding anniversary.
And she suffered terribly
for about 2 years
as an invalid.
For the last 2 years of her life,
I was her nurse,
I was her doctor, I was her friend,
I was her lover, I was her husband.
Everybody wanted me to get
a full-time nurse, day and night,
and she begged me not to.
She only wanted me to look after her.
And I loved doing it for her.
And I did it by myself.
I carried her to the car,
I carried her oxygen tank,
her wheelchair.
I packed it in the car,
I pushed her round,
I put it back, I took her home,
I bathed her, I put her to bed.
And I loved it
that I was able to do it for her
without anyone else.
And she appreciated it.
That's love.
The magic moment
that I had with my grandfather
was right after my grandmother died.
I went to go see him.
I knew that he was hurting,
but I wasn't sure
what kind of state he would be in.
And she was his partner 65 years
as well as his driver.
I said: "Grandpa...
"How are you doing?"
And he said:
"Did you know that for 4 dollars,
"I can get a shuttle
anywhere in the city?"
I said:
"Wow, that's great, Grandpa."
He said:
"Well, I went to the grocery store,
"I went to the woman
behind the counter and said:
"I have this list of things.
Could you help me find them?
"My wife has recently changed
her residence to heaven."
And I said:
"Grandpa, man, you always
help me see the glass as half full."
And he leaned back,
looked me in the eyes, and he said:
"It's a beautiful glass."
When I was 12, I left
my grandparents' house
because of abuse.
I went to live in the street.
It was better for me to keep going
and try to become independent.
What I can never forgive
concerns my mother.
Selling me wasn't a good idea.
Because we're her children
and she suffered, giving birth to us.
So, that's what I'll never forgive.
The hardest moment
in my whole life
was my father's death.
Because...
I don't want to cry.
He supported me.
He would...
He would encourage
me and my brothers.
I'm not afraid of anything anymore,
because I've been through
many horrible things,
and I've grown used to it.
And I'm hardly scared of anything.
When they say to me:
"We're going to hit you.
We'll kill you."
I say to them: "No, I'm not scared,
"and if you do,
I won't be scared."
My father used to tell me
that it didn't matter if you fell.
You just had to get up again.
If I fell, I had to get up again.
Always get up again.
That helps me a lot.
If I lived in the past,
I'd spend my time crying,
I'd be bitter,
I wouldn't be friendly.
You have to know
how to play and smile,
because living in the past is no use.
You have to live in the present.
Family, to me,
is a communion.
It's coming home
and being greeted:
"It's good to have you home!"
Helping my brothers
to do what I can already do,
because I'm one of the elders.
Teaching them.
Seeing my father
come home from work, satisfied,
sitting in his armchair,
and me making him a coffee.
That makes me feel good.
It fills you up inside.
If someone's missing,
it feels like a hole in your heart.
"What the hell has happened?
"Where is he?"
Family is something
happy, remarkable.
It's something else.
It fills you up.
When I was young,
I didn't think I was going to stay
in the religious community
that I had joined.
And I suppose I didn't understand
what I was actually doing
and that I was maybe
making a decision
which meant
that I wouldn't have children
and I wouldn't have a family
as other people had.
I don't really think
I understood that,
but later in life,
I had a sister who died
of cancer.
And when I saw her family,
I realized
that when I died,
there wouldn't be anybody...
to mourn me the same way.
As time goes on, then you recognize
that you are a parent to other people
who you work with
or who are friends
or who are related
to you in some way.
So, even though
you haven't your own family,
you have family.
So, I think that's important to me.
My whole life,
I wanted to have a son.
I already had daughters.
I wanted a son
to support me, be my right-hand man.
My son brings me a lot,
just in the way he looks at me.
When we're doing odd jobs...
I try to explain things to him.
I often say to him:
it is said...
that when God...
gave
this child to that family,
the angels asked: "Lord,
"why do You give a handicapped child
to that family?
"They live well. They're happy.
"Why do You impose
such a burden on them?"
God replied:
"I chose them
"so that they may teach the child
that I exist,
"that I am omnipresent,
"in the leaves and in the wind."
That's what I tell my son.
I say to him...
I tell him all the time...
I say to him: "Look, Alyosha.
"That's a leaf.
"And those are flowers.
"All that makes up
"the happiness of life."
When I'm with Alyocha in the evening,
I say to him:
"Look, son,
those are stars!"
And he
sees them
and he looks at me
with adult eyes.
I get the impression
that he has a spirit
that's much stronger than mine.
It's my son who guides me.
He guides the whole family.
That's why...
now I understand
what love is
and the meaning of love.
Because to live together,
you must love yourself,
love your wife,
your children,
big and small.
You must love your family,
your parents.
My parents are still alive.
You must love
all human beings
for what they are deep down
for only the love of people
can save the world.
No, I never thought about it.
I wouldn't have liked to be a man.
Because men have an easy life.
Too easy.
And easy lives are boring.
It's easy professionally,
maybe even easier to attain
their sentimental prey.
For women,
everything is more difficult.
But there is also the appeal
of attaining your goals
despite the difficulties.
Without question, I prefer
being a woman.
I feel powerless when, say,
a very small woman enters the store,
sees something high up
and says to me:
"If only a man could get that..."
You don't have to be a man.
Jump up and grab it.
You have two hands. Why a man?
Whatever next?
It makes me so angry.
I really don't like it when women...
I hate it
when women are discriminated against.
Today, I feel free.
Because...
I can do lots of things
without rushing.
What's more,
I'm divorced.
Sorry.
Excuse me.
I shouldn't say that, should I?
Sorry.
Do you want to do it again?
Is that OK?
I know I shouldn't laugh about it,
but I feel good, I feel free.
My husband has 2 wives.
He's polygamous, he has 2 wives.
Here, in Senegal,
with polygamy,
some people have 4 wives.
Others have 3, or 2.
But some people only have 1 wife.
It's their choice.
Some even have 6, 7, 8, 9...
as many as 10!
But my husband has 2 wives.
2 wives.
I'm the 1st, the other is the 2nd.
We live in peace.
She's my friend.
She really loves me. And I love her.
Luckily, for us,
polygamy isn't possible for women.
I say "luckily," because if my wife
loved another man besides me,
it'd make things difficult.
It'd be very complicated
because I am extremely jealous.
Extremely jealous.
I couldn't stand
my wife spending the night
in another man's arms
and then spend the next night
with me.
I could never stand that.
So, luckily,
polygamy for women
isn't possible in Burkina Faso.
Because I just couldn't imagine it.
When I went and stayed with my...
wife at her house in San Francisco...
She's not my wife,
but the woman I'm with.
This was about a week
after we started dating.
I woke up in the morning and I said:
"I ask this of you
and this of you and this of you
"and you're hesitating."
The woman I'm with
can't have a list of nos.
It's got to be pretty much all yeses
or we don't have a relationship.
And it took her about a month
after I pointed that out to her
to realize
that these nos could not exist.
And so, that's how very little shitty
my woman is.
She's freakin' very unique,
very amazing.
She gives me...
Like, she was raised
to adore her man.
Like old-school Mexican.
Know when to speak up.
That doesn't mean
you can't tell me something,
that doesn't mean
I don't want guidance.
But in my household,
the man is the man of the house.
At home, on weekends,
I do the cooking.
One day, a friend came to my house.
He said: "You do the cooking?"
I said: "Yes."
"Is your wife sick?"
I said: "No, she's resting."
"What? You do the cooking
"while your wife has a rest?"
"Yes, she needs rest."
He said:
"My wife will never come visit you.
"You'd put ideas in her head.
"When she comes home,
"she'll ask me to cook too."
I said to him: "You must understand
"that they need to rest."
Anyway, I enjoy
cooking for my family.
I'm in prison,
because I had an abortion.
I couldn't have continued my studies
because I was in a boarding school
and I didn't want to stop my studies.
I'd have stopped for too long,
with the pregnancy,
the birth, breastfeeding,
and I couldn't consider that.
So, I decided to have an abortion.
What pleases me today
is that I'm getting out of prison
tomorrow.
I'll continue my studies
and work.
And maybe one day, I'll have a child.
I'll be just like everyone else.
There is a way out of being abused.
For me, it was tough because
I used to have the worst abuse.
I would have a gun put to my head
and get told to go on my knees
and beg for my life.
And I would do it.
My kids used to be watching.
Or get put out of the house
and have to sleep outside
on the steps.
If I moved from there,
I'd get a hiding.
It was tough,
because I thought it was me.
I was the one
that was doing something wrong
in our marriage.
I talked about my kids,
the most important thing of my life.
I thought,
if I don't move on out of here,
I'm either going to be dead
or my kids are going to be dead.
So, I need to move on.
I need to do something.
I went home that day
and I said to him: "I'm leaving."
Mark got a bit of a shock,
because he didn't realize
that I was leaving.
He said: "You'll never leave me,
you love me too much."
And I said: "Well, you know what?
"That's what love is about. Leaving."
I gave him two choices.
I said to him:
"You either go for counseling,
or I leave."
You know what?
Today, he's a better man.
He's never lifted a hand up for me
since the day.
That's about 9 years ago.
So, 9 years ago,
I was still an abused woman.
I am gay.
I've known I've liked girls
ever since I was a little girl.
And I kept it a secret
from my family.
I remember when Ellen DeGeneres,
the TV host, came out,
it was the first time I ever heard
of the word "gay" before.
My parents were talking about it.
I asked my dad: "Dad, what is gay?"
"It's a girl who likes another girl
and they're going to hell."
And so, I said: "OK."
I walked straight up to my room,
closed the door
very quietly,
and then,
I bawled my eyes out into my pillow.
And I prayed to God every day:
"Please let me like boys,
please make me straight."
Because I knew I liked girls.
And so, I tried
pretending I liked boys,
but I never did.
And then, I met
to me the love of my life.
And her name is Jen.
Gosh, she was just...
my world changed.
And I didn't really care
about anything else.
I just knew I wanted to be near her.
And that was love to me.
Being a lesbian
is not a choice for me.
It's something that is inside you...
that no one can help.
It's not curable.
It's not a disease actually.
'Cause they always say we're sick.
Our families
even take us to the doctor's,
to the marabout's.
But it just stays there.
I even had to
force myself with guys
to get my granny's approval.
It hurts, 'cause
I had to do stuff
I really, really didn't want to do.
Even though I did that...
I even asked a friend of mine
to pretend as if he's my boyfriend.
But that guy, what he did...
He forced himself to me
and then, he left me with HIV.
And that was in 2003.
I did all that
just to get my granny's approval.
But now
I know
that I don't have to do anything
to please someone else.
My parents were so afraid
I'd remain a homosexual
that when I said I was changing,
they really believed it.
They asked me every day:
"OK, have you changed?"
As it's not possible to change,
I pretended to ignore the question.
After a while,
my father couldn't take any more.
He started yelling at me,
hitting me and saying:
"I know you haven't changed!
"If you bullshit me,
"I'll make your life hell.
"Leave now
if you're really like that."
So, I left. I didn't hesitate.
I left.
I have a son who's now 31 years old
who I love very much.
He's gay, a gay man.
The day that he came out
was quite significant.
I knew that he was struggling
with something.
He'd been suicidal
and he was 18 years old.
He said to me one day:
"Dad, I've got to tell you something."
And I said:
"OK, son, tell me, what is it?"
He went pale, he really went white,
and he said: "I feel sick."
And my heart really went out to him.
At that moment, I kind of knew
that he was going to tell me
he was gay
although I hadn't made
that connection,
because he's quite masculine
in his traits.
At that moment, I had a sense
that's what he was going to tell me.
So, I said to him:
"Son, let me guess.
"Let me make it easier for you."
He said OK.
I said: "You're going to tell me
you're gay, aren't you?"
He went: "Yes, I am."
I just really, really felt for him.
It was such a struggle for him
to tell me that.
Everything sort of made sense,
because he didn't want to be gay.
And that's why he'd been suicidal.
I just gave him a big hug
and said: "I love you anyway, son.
"It doesn't make any difference
to how much I love you."
And I think that
our relationship has really been
a lot stronger since then.
So, that's been
a journey in itself.
It was in 2009.
A friend, homosexual like me.
When this friend died,
he was buried
in his village cemetery.
But the local imam
gathered together the people,
the young people.
They went to the cemetery
to dig up the body.
They took it, tied it up,
and dragged it through the streets.
The media were there.
They filmed it.
The police came.
Afterwards,
the family got the body back
and buried it again.
It was dug up again. 3 times in all.
In the end, the body was buried
in his father's yard.
Because the Muslim religion says
that when you're homosexual,
if you die,
people can't pray for you,
they can't bury you
in a Muslim cemetery.
That's what they say.
I'm a gay man from Lebanon.
We have no rights over there.
We have no rights
in the Arab world in general.
I think what I can do more
is what I've started to do,
I think I should come out even more.
I am out to my parents.
I am out to my friends,
I am out to my work,
but I think I want to encourage
other people like me
who have nothing to lose.
Because I have a salary,
because my mum
has proven with time,
it took time,
that she'll love me anyway.
Now she knows,
she knows my boyfriend.
She loves me for the way I am,
my dad as well.
My friends as well.
I think if you don't tell anyone,
the other moms won't know
that it's OK to be gay.
People should be less shy,
more daring
when you have nothing to lose.
Some people have a lot to lose.
Those are not the people
that should do the change,
but the ones
that have nothing to lose.
In Iraq, one of my friends
was hit with a car bomb
in front of me.
I chased after the triggerman
with my squad,
with one of my teams.
And we were just...
we wanted to kill that guy.
'Cause I could hear
my buddy screaming, he was hurt.
And so, we're running
as fast as we can.
We're just full of hate and fury.
We just want to do
whatever we can to...
He hurt our friend,
we're going to get him back.
We're just running as fast as we can,
with all that weight.
Just sweat pouring off of us.
Through orange fields,
then we get to a clearing.
It hit me. I mean, this blue sky.
There was an old man
in a white robe and a child.
Just tilling a field, you know,
and that just...
brought me back to reality.
"What am I doing?
"I'm a human being, I'm not...
"I'm not some instrument of revenge."
I don't know. It's like,
you stop and you're like...
Just people doing
people things here,
where I'm supposed to...
where all this violence is happening.
And you stop and you're like...
I don't know, makes you human again.
I get up in the morning,
go to the fields
to get my beans and my corn.
I see ripe beans and corn.
Oh, what joy!
When we get to the field,
we are so happy
that we almost want
to just stand there
as it's so beautiful.
A field of corn or beans
is beautiful.
And every time, it gives us
fresh heart.
At the moment, I have nothing at all.
I farm a small piece of land.
I plant some vegetables to eat.
My husband has just gone
to get his pay,
but it's a tiny amount.
Apart from that,
I have nothing at all.
There's just a hen at home.
If she lays eggs,
I sell them at the market,
then I buy salt and things,
enough to survive each day.
I have no cattle.
I have nothing.
Yes, well,
I, Estima Joseph, say
that my life is finished
in this country.
The rain doesn't fall.
I can't plant anything to harvest
to feed my wife and children.
So, at the moment,
there's no more wood to chop
in the countryside
to earn money,
not even small branches
to make a bag of charcoal.
You can spend a day or two
without any food
for your children
who are crying at your feet.
There's no-one to tell you:
"My dear fellow, take this.
"It's for you,
to help you in the country!"
We're lying down, waiting for death,
because what we call life is over.
You lie there,
you've nothing for your children.
Nothing to give them,
nobody to help you.
You lie there and wait for death.
I call that "life finished".
Life is already finished.
You don't have an animal to sell.
Yes.
Yes, life is completely finished.
Yes.
We had no harvest.
It was so dry
that my husband had 2 wells dug
for 70,000 rupees each.
But as they didn't find any water,
the vines dried up
and we didn't have any grapes.
I think that my husband
already had debts last year
which he couldn't repay.
Now who should be paid back first?
I have no idea what to do.
There's no water anywhere.
There was a well, but it's dry.
There's no more water.
So, how can the debts be repaid?
That's why he committed suicide.
This year,
I was covering a very severe drought
in western Maharastra,
in this country.
And on the one hand,
I was looking at
people facing destitution
due to a water crisis.
On the other hand,
I was looking
at multi-story buildings coming up
with a swimming pool
on every floor.
We're not talking about buildings
with 3 or 4 floors.
There is a plan
for 2 twin towers in Mumbai
even now under construction,
37 floors each,
which means
there are 74 swimming pools.
It's a twin tower.
And then, I went and looked at
who are the people doing
the construction, these laborers.
All the laborers
were landless laborers
and marginal farmers
who had left their villages
as refugees of the water crisis
and they're in the cities
building our swimming pools.
The sheer humiliation of it,
the sheer injustice of it!
I think
the fastest growing sector in India
is not software or IT.
It is inequality.
So, yeah, it makes me furious.
It is completely unacceptable to me
to see how closely
the affluence of the few
is tied to the misery of the many.
That's unacceptable.
World leaders,
help us have a decent life.
Otherwise we'll starve to death.
It's the fault of the government
and politicians
if we have nothing to wear,
nowhere to sleep,
and nothing to cook.
We're dying.
Who knows
if we'll still be alive tomorrow?
Who can say
if we'll have anything to eat?
My children are dying.
We have nowhere to live,
not even a roof or a plot of land.
I go from village to village
to plow other people's fields.
And all this for what?
One day, we eat,
the next, we have to starve.
But nobody listens to us.
The government doesn't care
about our problems.
They don't think
about us poor folk.
Only about themselves.
I left Pakistan
because of our living conditions.
It was especially clear to my wife
that my income could not provide
for health care and schooling.
She sacrificed herself for me,
for my family.
I sacrificed myself and my family too
by allowing myself
to emigrate so I could at least
give my children an education
and health care
and meet all their basic needs.
I'll never forget the day I left.
I was with a few friends.
My mother came out on the doorstep.
She was holding my son in her arms.
I was sitting in the car.
She put my son on my lap:
"Take a good look at him.
"Who knows
when you'll see him again?"
I'll never forget that scene.
I can still see my child
as if he were right in front of me.
I left Sudan because the regime
wouldn't leave us alone.
Entire families were killed.
Everyone figured
we were doomed.
The main thing was that I was saved.
God spared me.
I arrived in France.
Thanks to God,
at home, we were farmers.
And it was enough for us!
We had cattle.
We never lacked either money
or food.
Thanks to God, we lived well.
But the regime
would not leave us alone.
They raped my sisters in front of me.
When my wife arrived,
they flogged her.
They raped her in front of me.
How could I live
in that country?
When I was in the boat,
I was very scared,
because I saw absolutely nothing,
only the water.
And the boat also,
it's not a quality boat.
We are 110 people inside the boat,
nobody comfortable.
There was no food to eat,
no water to drink.
You are sitting in that fuel.
It destroyed all my body.
Things were hard for me.
So, when I see the Italians,
they come and rescue us,
I thank God.
I know that now I'm safe.
Europeans have their reasons
for limiting immigration.
We stay here, but there's no work.
There are entire families
in which no one works.
If you can't fish,
you have nothing to do.
Thousands of Africans
die at sea, going to Europe.
But it's worth it. I'm leaving again.
For Spain or Italy.
I've made up my mind.
It's in my blood to go.
I'll go by canoe.
I'll go, crying. I'll go, shouting.
Now I'm living
in the jungle of Calais.
The police come and disturb us:
"You have to leave the jungle."
I said: "Where I have to go?
"Show me the place.
We want to go to that."
He said: "You have to go back
to your country."
"Where is my country?
"I don't have a country, man!
"It's a killing ground,
"it's a ground of killing the people,
"it's a ground of fighting.
"It is not a country!
"Afghanistan is not a country now!
"It's a killing ground, man."
37 countries
came to control that country,
but they cannot control these people.
The UN cannot control these people!
How can you send me back
to that country?
I lost my family in that country.
How can I go back to that country?
I was a refugee in Pakistan,
a refugee in Iran,
a refugee in Dubai.
I was a refugee in Turkey,
a refugee in Bulgaria,
a refugee in a European country,
in Greece.
And now I'm a refugee in France.
But let me live, man.
I don't want anything from you.
I don't want eating from you.
I don't want anything from you.
I don't need help!
But let me live.
Dad, here I am in Italy.
I don't know how you are.
I don't know if you can see me,
but I'm in Italy.
I'll always worry about you,
you and the others,
all my brothers and sisters,
and all my friends over there.
If I make it here,
it'll be mainly for you.
I'll think about you
till my last breath.
I don't have the means yet,
so pray for me.
I greet you all!
I'm a Bangladeshi worker
in the garment industry.
I'm outraged
when a buyer comes to meet
the company owner
or the marketing team
to negotiate the price of his order.
And when other countries
slash prices,
our buyer will look
for the best deal.
He could just think:
"If Bangladesh supplies me
"with good quality garments,
"why not pay a fair price?"
But we've always been scorned.
By everyone.
Not just one person in particular.
It's the final consumer
who steals from me.
What can I do about it?
What can...
How will we be happy?
How?
Many things are forbidden
in the factory:
no talking,
no answering the phone.
To go to the bathroom,
we have to ask the supervisor
for permission,
and only one person at a time.
As for productivity,
he's very demanding.
There's an hourly quota to meet,
it's checked.
If the quota isn't met,
they blame you
and often insult you.
It's unbearable.
We're under constant pressure.
I feel exhausted.
I can't take any more,
but I have no other choice.
An honest worker isn't rich.
I'm talking about someone
who works in a company,
not the heir to the family business.
They just juggle
millions in a company.
Those folk don't work.
They sit at a desk
and sign bits of paper.
They're thieves just like me.
I'm sure of it.
If you're talking about workers,
they're people
who get up every morning
and who do real work.
I don't know any rich folk.
But take my mother,
she got up every morning,
and she's over 40 already.
She's not rich.
She's worked her whole life.
Losing my job was a huge shock.
Not finding another
was an even bigger shock.
You know, I worked for 27 years.
When I had to
go back to live with my mother,
I mainly felt
humiliation.
A feeling...
of devastation.
I sank into a deep depression.
More and more.
I said to myself:
"I'm 47 and my life is over?
"Have I nothing else to offer?
"Nothing more?"
And these thoughts
stop you going out and talking.
You look at yourself in the mirror
and say: "Who are you, moron?
"What are you playing at?
"What are you doing in this life?
"Why are you breathing?
"Why do you see the sun?
"What makes you...
"any use in this mess you live in?
"Why, at 47,
"did you go back
to live at your mother's?
"Were you afraid
of being on the street?"
Yes, I'm scared
of being on the street.
And this humiliation turns into rage.
Rage,
because you want to let off steam,
and you don't know how.
I am poor.
I will define poverty now.
What poverty means to me.
It's when I have to go to school,
but I can't go.
When I have to eat, but I can't.
When I have to sleep, but I can't.
When my wife and children suffer.
I don't have
a sufficient intellectual level
to get us out of this situation,
me or my family.
I really feel poor.
Physically poor, mentally poor.
And you rich people who listen to me,
what do you have to say
about your wealth?
I know
that I'm less happy with more money.
And I know that I still want more.
I like things
and I pursue the things,
but the things only make me happy
for a short period of time.
Then, I go back
and I have the challenges of my family
and I don't know how
to make a depressed person happy.
You can't give them a thing
and make them happy,
because their brain is not happy.
So, I feel frustrated that
the cures don't exist.
And I can't just wave a magic wand
and make my...
son...
better.
I lived in a place
surrounded by villas.
And I lived in a hovel.
I knew that people
sometimes threw food away.
And we, especially me,
we were hungry.
We just wanted some food.
For me, poverty
makes me sad
because of the injustice.
Because if everyone had food,
at least had full bellies,
at home, we could think.
Reasoning is intelligence.
So, we could be poor,
live in a hovel,
but have the intelligence
to be able to get ahead.
Thank God,
I managed to rise above all that.
But how many others can't?
Many die because of it.
And that is really sad.
To me, that's sheer injustice.
The street is a very tough school.
Poverty
is a state
which I'm in
at the moment.
When you're poor,
day in and day out,
it's not that you enjoy it,
but you do get used to it,
quite simply.
Poverty is a state.
It's a state
which lasts.
And for many.
Far too many.
What would I like to ask?
What the hell I'm doing here.
Why can't I be where you are
to see what the hell is going on?
Let's switch for a minute.
Let's switch!
You come here and be me
and I'll go there and be you.
We'll meet up
in the middle line on the Equator
and we'll play golf.
It doesn't matter
if I'm the president (of Uruguay).
I've thought about all this a lot.
I spent over 10 years
in a solitary confinement cell.
I had the time...
I spent 7 years
without opening a book.
It left me time to think.
This is what I discovered.
Either you're happy with very little,
without overburdening yourself,
because you have happiness inside,
or you'll get nowhere.
I am not advocating poverty.
I'm advocating sobriety.
But we invented
a consumer society...
which is continually seeking growth.
When there's no growth, it's tragic.
We invented a mountain
of superfluous needs.
You have to keep buying,
throwing away...
It's our lives we are squandering.
When I buy something,
or when you buy it,
we're not paying with money.
We're paying
with the time from our lives
we had to spend
to earn that money.
The difference is
that you can't buy life.
Life just goes by.
And it's terrible
to waste your life
losing your freedom.
I'm not afraid of dying.
My children want to make me happy
so that I leave this life serenely.
If I'm happy before I die,
I will be after, too.
I can't work anymore.
I'm so old that I no longer know
if I should sleep
on this side or that side.
I sleep badly.
So, I wait in my bed.
Sometimes, I tell myself
I'd be better off dead.
At least I'd be at peace.
After death,
for me, there's nothing else.
Then, we'll laugh:
we're going to heaven,
but we're not taking the right path.
When you go in the ground,
you don't go to heaven.
We're not taking the right path.
I don't think
there's life after death.
I don't believe in all that.
When I think of my grandmother
whom I loved a lot
and who died a long time ago,
I tell myself memories soon fade.
The picture becomes blurred.
Sometimes,
the sound of the voice disappears.
What do we leave behind?
What remains?
That scares me.
It's a totally irrational fear...
which is based on something
completely archaic and tribal.
It stirs up
so many things inside of me.
It's not something
which has to do with pride
or anything like that.
It's something else.
It's to do with the meaning of life.
What have we done with our lives?
Why am I here?
I don't know.
I'd like to leave something behind.
I'd like to leave my mark.
The meaning of life...
I don't know
if it comes from the fact
that I don't feel important.
We are not important.
I don't see...
I don't see life that way.
You just have to live life.
We all have been, we all are,
and we all will cease to be.
I think I was born
to give birth
to one or two children.
To feed them
from infancy
so that, when I'm old,
they take care of me, in return.
My biggest fear is...
is being nobody,
is being nothing...
Not knowing
why I'm here, what the point is,
if it has meaning.
To really not be any use whatsoever,
me,
just a man among men.
I have the impression
that there's a universal dynamic
and if I'm not part of it,
it will destroy me.
I want to be part
of the history of mankind.
Me being 15 with a life sentence,
what can be the meaning of my life?
That is a hard question.
I think
the meaning of my life could be
happiness, making everything right.
Helping out young and older people.
Just help one another.
Stand for someone.
Just stay out of trouble,
don't come to prison.
That ain't no meaning in life.
This ain't no place for nobody.
I don't know...
Everybody has their own purpose.
I don't know what my purpose is.
I don't know about that question.
Sometimes, I think
of a phrase I heard as a boy,
a friend who said:
"Life is like carrying a message
"from the child you were
"to the old man you will be.
"You have to make sure
that this message
"isn't lost along the way."
I often think of that,
because when I was little,
I used to imagine fine things,
to dream of a world without beggars
in which everyone was happy.
Simple, subtle things.
But you lose those things
over the course of life.
You just work
to be able to buy things.
And you stop seeing the beggar,
you stop caring.
Where's the message
of the child I once was?
Maybe the meaning of life
is making sure that this message
doesn't disappear.
I've already asked myself...
I've already asked myself
why I was on Earth.
I'm here...
to do what God
has planned for me.
Because on Earth,
everyone has a mission.
I have one, too,
but I don't know it yet.
This movie is dedicated
to the thousands of people
who answered our questions
with honesty, courage and kindness.
A huge thank you.
A special thank you also
to the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation
and to its team
who made this project possible.
Mom and Dad, you must listen to me:
if you can, stop the drugs.
I've told you so many times
and I tell you again.
Stop the drugs. They're bad for you.
They're destroying you physically.
If you remember
that I'm your daughter, stop.
Do it for me.
I have a younger brother...
I have a little brother who died.
He left behind a 4-year-old girl.
Unfortunately,
the mother of the girl is dead, too.
So, I'd like to tell that brother
that he shouldn't worry.
I knew this brother's love
for his daughter.
He should know
that she is in good hands,
that I take very good care of her.
I'm a lady of the night
and I have a message for my parents.
Don't worry anymore.
It's OK now.
I can fulfill my mission.
I can look after
my brothers and sisters.
They're at home and will study.
They'll complete their studies,
I promise.
I don't want them
to have a hard life.
They must study for years.
It will make me happy,
because I wasn't so lucky.
They'll complete their studies.
I want them to study
as long as possible.
I don't have the intelligence
to do anything else,
but I want my brothers and sisters
to finish their studies.
There are two things
I'd like to tell you.
Don't forget who you are
and always smile.
Smiling is the only language
everyone understands.
You've brought up
a lot of things for me today.
You've made me feel important.
You've made me feel
that I have something to offer,
that I had a place to go.
You made me feel
like my stories were welcome.
And you made me feel happy.
I think people need to
feel that they have done something
while they've lived.
They need to feel
that they've contributed.
And today,
you made me feel like I contributed.
And I'm very grateful to you
for that.
Thank you.
My message is that you are
welcome to my home.
Come to my home.
I invite you all!
Every tribe:
Ovatua, Ovahimba,
Ovambo, Ovangandjiera.
You're all welcome.
Today, in this world,
we hear
about people who make films.
We hear this kind of story,
but now...
that Ulla and Emmanuel are here,
that they're making a film,
everyone will see where we live,
in my village.
I am so happy.
Seeing more film-people coming here
would make me very happy.
The world will get to know us.
I don't know if they'll see me,
but I am very happy
to talk now
and to those who will come.
Tell them.
There's nothing to add.
We talked about peace.
We talked about everything.
We've finished, it's over.