Bicycling Dutch historian Rutger Bregman does not identify as an optimist. He says that optimism makes people lazy, complacent that history is going in the right direction. Instead he describes himself as a “possibilist”, a believer in the possibility that things can be different. Bregman is interviewed in this film about corruption, kleptocracy and structural inequality. The director is documentary-maker Fredrik Gertten who travels the world meeting activists who have had enough.
First, the cold hard facts. Journalist and corruption expert Sarah Chayes, a former adviser to the Obama administration, does an impressive job summarising her analysis of global kleptocracy. In Malta, the son of the murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed after exposing corruption at the highest levels of government, investigates the new scandal of “golden passports”. The film’s main focus is activism in Chile and the US. Amazon workers in New York unionise (and have a good laugh at their boss Jeff Bezos’s trip to space). In Chile, feminists march and climate activists go into battle against mining companies responsible for drought.
The list goes on. An American school teacher organises strikes; an indigenous 21-year-old becomes Chile’s youngest ever politician. If there is criticism of Breaking Social it is that it jams too many stories together; each one has enough material for a standalone film. But its energy and sense of possibilism is infectious – and historian Bregman is a joy, with his cuddly nuggets of wisdom. Take evolution: we need to rethink survival of the fittest, he says. The ice age was more about survival of the friendliest. Getting by was a snuggle for survival. Without friends to keep you warm, you wouldn’t survive for long.
