HUMAN

A film by Y. Arthus-Bertrand intended to understand the men

Akteos organized private screenings ofHuman to be an "Ambassador of living together" according to the wish of Y. Arthus-Bertrand's wish and to echo his vocation: "to understand people and help them to work better together".

Human's objective is unambiguous: to unveil humanity in all its diversity in order to raise awareness and promote living together. Its strategy for achieving this goal is to touch the heart.

A wide range of emotions

The first thing that stands out is the emotion that the faces and words of the interviewed witnesses communicate to the viewer.

It is difficult to remain insensitive to the opening testimony: a killer condemned to death tells how he discovered love thanks to Angela, mother and grandmother of his two victims, a woman and her son.

This inaugural testimony opens a long series of portraits, between which one circulates on a very broad palette of emotions. All the great themes of life are addressed: love, happiness, family, death, etc.

We look for our breath. And when you don't laugh, your throat clenches, your eyes are moved. It takes a heart of stone not to identify at one moment or another, to live a testimony, to be touched or even disturbed by a comment, a look or a mimic of these faces of all ages, all types, all cultures.

The stories, from the trivial to the grandiose, bring together the great and the small, a myriad of anecdotes, comments, learned remarks, angry outbursts, direct addresses to the world's leaders, thanks as well as hands simply extended in invitation.

From north to south, it is all the diversity of our planet that is thus presented to us and that soliloquizes. The word is central: plain black background, tight shot on the face. We can guess the clothes, the bodies, we see sometimes the hands. The attention of the spectator is entirely directed towards the words. These are the heads of men and women who, for some, are looking for a way to leave a trace, to find their place in the world, to belong to the community of men, while others are fully aware of their raison d'être, focused on primary needs, naked of trivia. They are a bit, these heads, as on a podium, lit, made up, arranged, highlighted, they are the central characters of the film. And they parade at full speed, delivering their pathetic, funny, sad, moved, philosophical, etc. message, one after the other, as in a fashion show. We capture a human moment, then an image, then another human moment.

Spectacular aerial images

What is striking then, are the landscapes filmed or photographed from the air, and in which the spectator has the impression of melting into them, so realistic are they on the screen. These views are the silent counterpart of the words spoken by the countless witnesses, they are diverse and strong. They are also set to music, dressed, and complete Yann Arthus-Bertrand's project in terms of aesthetic coherence: to make Human a work of art. The process: separating the two levels of a portrait to put the portrait and its background side by side in two different frames.

Human allows us to embrace the human condition and to reflect on the very meaning of our existence on earth. And to conclude, we offer you some extracts of testimonies collected after the screenings.

"Human has made me reborn and I have never felt more human than nowt".

"All the facets of man and the earth. From beauty to darkness".

"So close and so distant at the same time. This other I don't care about and who touches me".

"The world is only made of interculturality. Thank you to Akteos for this beautiful moment of sharing".