Not without us

15 countries, 16 children, 5 continents, 1 voice – however different their living environments and personalities may be, their fears, hopes and dreams and the urgent warning to preserve our (re) environment are very similar. Whether they grow up privileged in the western affluent society or in the poor regions of Africa or Asia and are directly confronted with child labor, prostitution, war and violence, all these children have the universal longing for security and peace, happiness, friendship and love. They are united by the rejection and fear of war and violence. And every single one of these children is concerned about nature and the associated destruction of their direct and indirect living space. All 16 children allow us to share in their thoughts, desires, fears and hopes: REBEKKA, who uses a white cane to feel her way through the village idyll of her Swiss homeland and along train platforms and underpasses, and would love to become a veterinarian, VINCENT, who lives with his family in a mountain hut in Austria and would like to take over the family business despite climate change, the HIV-positive LUNIKO, from the South African million-strong township of , who can never go to school without fear, ENJO, the little philosopher and conservationist, deeply connected to his world between Churfirsten and Walensee, SANJANA from a red-light district in India, who criticizes the poor education system in India, SAI, the intellectual from New York who left India behind and commutes daily between Flushing Queens and Manhattan, the orphan ALPHONSINE, who walks proudly through the village on the Ivory Coast despite her sad life story, TO, the boy from the province of Luang Prabang in Laos, who finds the 2-hour journey by boat across the Mekong and by tuk-tuk bus through burnt-down areas difficult, not the school. EKHLAS, the Bedouin girl from Jordan who feels sorry for her Syrian neighbors and is concerned that there are fewer and fewer waterholes where she can pitch her tent. JAFER, who has already experienced all too much of the horrors of war in Iraq in his short life, FINYA, who is aware of her sheltered childhood in Germany but still fears that it will not last forever, or YAMABUKI from Japan, who fervently hopes that the radioactivity in his area after the Fukushima disaster cannot be as bad as it is in his country. VALERIA from Peru, who is no longer allowed to bathe in the river of her childhood because it is so polluted that just putting your hand in the water makes you sick, LUCILA from Argentina, who wants to become a theater actress and finds it sad that more and more trees are being cleared in her delta to build new houses, thereby increasingly disrupting the natural balance. Or PERLA from Iceland, who is enthusiastic about her clean home country and very cleverly sums up one of the central desires: “All children want to have someone they can trust, who will help them in life, a family and also friends who will take care of them and love them as parents do. Nothing is more important than that.” Curious and hungry for education, they want to change the world. A film about the future of the planet that these children want to help shape – an appeal to us all: NOT WITHOUT US! The film was also very well received at the doxs! festival organized by our media partner in Duisburg.