Ms. Cotillard, how did it come about that after many leading roles in the cinema you are now presenting yourself in a new role: as an ambassador for the film “Bigger Than Us”, about young people who work for a better world?
I met director Flore Vasseur at an event. She told me about her project, which would focus on Melati Wijsen, a young woman who, at the age of 12, had started campaigning against plastic pollution in Indonesia, together with her sister Isabel, who was two years younger. Flore began looking for other activists, and it turned out that there are exciting people fighting for social and environmental causes everywhere. She asked me if I wanted to join, but I wasn’t quite sure how. It finally came naturally that I slipped into the role of a producer, although we didn’t call it that. I was able to support the creative process, financially I had no experience, Denis Carot was someone who knows the ropes. It all started in 2018, a few months before Greta Thunberg initiated the climate strike movement. That gave us extra energy.
Colleagues of yours like Angelina Jolie always stand up for good things, but also make sure that they themselves come into the picture. Why did you stay behind the camera in this case?
I don’t know if that would have made the film stronger if I had acted in it. From the start, Flore wanted to focus on the young people, and Melati was to be the link to the other protagonists: to Mohamad, who founded a school for Syrian refugees in Lebanon; on Memory, which is committed to raising the minimum age for marriage in Malawi, i.e. against child marriages; to Xiuhtezcatl, who is fighting fracking and, more broadly, global warming in Colorado; to Mary, who provides humanitarian aid to asylum seekers on Lesvos; to Rene, who publishes a magazine in a favela in Rio de Janeiro that serves local self-organization; and Winnie, who campaigns for healthy agriculture in Uganda.
These are all worthwhile concerns. Is there anything that is particularly important to you personally?
Environment or social issues – nothing can be separated from the global problem. It is important to focus on this interconnectedness of all phenomena. Everything affects everything else.
But you will not get by without prioritization.
I’m a woman, so I’m very touched by what Memory is doing in Malawi. She speaks for many people living in places where there is no access to education and she has defied that lack.
Above all, the issue of global warming is now probably.
It’s not just climate change, the loss of biodiversity is also a threat. We need to bring these issues back to humanity. There are philosophers and also activists who tell us very clearly: If humanity disappears, maybe the planet will be better off. But it would be sad because we are a great species, a great animal, it would be a huge loss if we disappeared. My upbringing was heavily focused on respect. I grew up and began to think for myself, and I ponder many questions. I had the chance to grow up on a continent where access to knowledge was not blocked. I was shocked by the fact that as humans we have taken ourselves out of nature and are trying to control it. We only see nature as an endless resource without realizing how much we are destroying it in the process.
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