Human – The Movie (Vol. 1)
Ever wonder what is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery?
Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand is especially well known for his book Earth from Above and his film Home.
5 years after the success of ‘Home’, seen by more than 600 million people, and following the ‘7 billion Others’ project, Yann Arthus-Bertrand designed this film as a unique feature film: HUMAN
Like every story, this one has a beginning. One day, in Mali, Yann Arthus-Bertrand was the victim of a helicopter breakdown. While waiting for the pilot, he spent the entire day in with a farmer who spoke to him, with great dignity and without complaint, of his daily life, his hopes, his fears and of his sole ambition: to feed his children. Yann remains deeply marked by this encounter, this man to whom he felt so close.
HUMAN the movie aims to be a sensitive and loving portrait of who we are, as a community, a family but most importantly as individuals.
HUMAN shows the dark side of mankind but sheds light on the best of it, for we all have inside of us this will to live together. This is the message that this film tries to convey. Together, united, we can meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
HUMAN is part of an overall logic whose intention is to gather together initiatives and resources from the community scene and from the humanitarian, ecological or social sectors.
A MOVIE WITH THREE VOICES
These three voices – People’s word, Earth’s testimonial et Music’s lyrism – act together to provide a single voice to our humanities.
THE VOICE OF PEOPLE
As an ode to humanity, HUMAN is a rare collection of stories, faces and fates. Asylum seekers in Calais, freedom fighters in Ukraine, workers in Bangladesh, farmers in Mali, sentenced on the death row in the United States, Yann-Arthus Bertrand takes us into an immersive experience through human destiny. Through several witnesses who succeed one another and confide, the film director portrays a contrasted humanity. They invite us to open our hearts and encourage us to hear what separates us, to discover what gathers us and to finally understand that the Other is often a little bit of us. All the interviews of the movie were taken from encounters on a single image layout. The conversations evolve according to the stories, the confessions,… inspired by a canvas of questions identical for all. Working closely with the coordinators and local translators, journalists and cameramen have installed, for each volunteer, an intimate atmosphere in order to collect these precious and personal stories that are at the very heart of HUMAN.
THE VOICE OF EARTH
Through the aerial sequences, Yann Arthus-Bertrand shares his vision of the world and the people with the spectator, and offers a poetic and critical insight of our planet. In HUMAN, the camera lens reveals places of an unsuspected beauty, but also poses a careful look at the lives of men worldwide.
This uneven development of our societies is emerging on our lands and our landscapes, taking the aerial image as witness. From our gatherings of joy to our forced wanderings, from the exaltation of our cities to the destruction of our villages, from the beauty of nature to its impoverishment … HUMAN creates an emotional link between mankind and the earth and addresses the question of our common future.
THE VOICE OF MUSIC
As an universal language, music transcends our emotions, sublimates the pictures and rhythmises the story. Almost indissociable from the image, it has always had an essential place in the work of Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Armand Amar’s compositions have emerged as an evidence to highlight the diversity and the richness of HUMAN’s purpose.
Through the prism of his creations, the composer magnifies the voices of mankind and Earth. Singers and musicians of the world gathered to create a musical landscape of a moving eclecticism. An immersion into the heart of humanity. Both self-taught, Armand Amar and Yann Arthus-Bertrand like to explore new artistic paths and improvise without constraints. They chose to turn this compositions into an artistic entity that grows and evolves in parallel, and enters into symbiosis with the film.
