A Wellbeing Economies Film
If you want to screen ‘Purpose’, please get in touch:
purpose@omnipolis.com
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The global multi-crisis is accelerating, it affects all levels of society: democracy, climate, biodiversity, migration, justice, equality, institutions, farming … And yet, there is no mainstream debate about the issue at the core of many — if not all — of these problems: our economies. How they function, what they deliver and how they are designed is not really part of our public conversation.
The economic system that is running our societies has a very narrow focus: We must “grow the GDP”, i.e. make more money, no matter the cost. Rather than improving our lives, this logic is now tearing our societies and our planet apart. But no one seems to be working on a viable political alternative.
Or maybe some people are? And we have just not been paying attention?
In late 2017, Katherine Trebeck initiates the ‘Wellbeing Economy Governments’, an international alliance opposed to the mighty G7. Her plan: a new group of countries that are ready to reshape their politics and redesign their economies. While she works tirelessly to make it happen, the project flounders, gets revived and evolves. Eventually, it unites five countries: Scotland, New Zealand, Iceland, Wales, and Finland. It may turn into a starting point for a new economic vision for the world.
Lorenzo Fioramonti helps start the alliance. Then, suddenly, he is invited to run for office in his home country Italy. He wins a parliamentary seat in the general election and hopes to create a wellbeing economy as a Minister for Economic Development. But then he gets sidelined in a troubled government. When it falls apart and a new coalition forms, he unexpectedly becomes Minister for Education and manages to implement some of his bold ideas.
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With his film Purpose, director Martin Oetting asks the central question of our time: What is the purpose of our economies, and how can we change it? The film follows two individuals who develop ground-breaking political projects in order to shift our economic systems — away from endless GDP growth, towards wellbeing for people and planet. They envision a world in which we no longer serve the economy, but the economy serves us.
"PURPOSE" 