Who We Were

Wer Wir Waren

“We were the ones who knew, but did not understand, full of information but lacking insight, brimming with knowledge, but lacking experience. So we just kept forging ahead, unstopped by ourselves.”

The German intellectual Roger Willemsen wrote these words, in his posthumous essay, Who We Were. Marc Bauder’s film of the same title takes inspiration from this essay, and asks what future generations will think of us. Will they look back on us in despair? For director Marc Bauder, this change in perspective invites us to rethink our present. From outer space to the depths of the ocean, from a G20 summit to the site of a nuclear disaster, Bauder meets six thinkers and scientists who speculate on our past, present and possible futures: astronaut Alexander Gerst, economist Dennis Snower, molecular biologist and monk Matthieu Ricard, deep sea researcher Sylvia Earle, philosopher Felwine Sarr and post-human theorist Janina Loh.