All societies are based on the idea of a social contract.
We are told that if we work hard, if we treat others with respect, if we play by the rules, we will be rewarded.
But then there are the rule breakers. Those who make use of tax havens and reap profits without paying back to society.
BREAKING SOCIAL looks at global patterns of kleptocracy and extractivism. An assassinated investigative journalist in Malta. A river without water in Chile.
When people reach a tipping point, they start to organise and protest. We will see those already fighting on the frontlines of social uprisings across the world.
BREAKING SOCIAL explores the possibilities of overcoming injustice and corruption. A film about reimagining the building blocks of our societies and igniting the seeds of hope that live within each of us.
People in the film
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Rutger Bregman
Rutger Bregman is a Dutch author and popular historian, advocating for universal basic income and the reconstruction of society’s building blocks. Born 1988.
He argues that those who work the most, get the least in today’s upside down economy. Still, Bregman believes in the goodness of humanity, our innate capacity for cooperation, and the possibilities for societal change. He says, “when we get angry, change is already happening”.
His books include Utopia for Realists (2017) and Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020)
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Sarah Chayes
Sarah Chayes is a world-leading expert on corruption and kleptocracy and an award-winning reporter for NPR. She served as a special advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Obama’s first administration. Born 1962.
After 10 years of analyzing local systems of corruption while working as a journalist in Afghanistan, Chayes came back to the US only to realize that the same kleptocratic patterns exist also in her home country. Internationally recognized for her innovative thinking on corruption and its implications, she’s known for uncovering how corruption can prompt international crises.
Latest books: Thieves of State (2015) and On Corruption in America (2020)
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Joanna Demarco
Joanna Demarco is a photographer and journalist. Her work focuses on social issues in Malta, often in relation to migration, as well as corruption and human rights. She is also interested in working on stories on the effects of the online world and new technology.
She had worked on the court case that follows the assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017, which is currently awaiting trial.
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Matthew Caruana Galizia
Matthew Caruana Galizia is an investigative journalist. He runs the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, dedicated to achieving justice for his mother, Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, assassinated in 2017.
He worked with his mother on the report about the Panama Papers and continues her legacy of exposing elites through investigative journalism.
Galizia also investigates the golden passport project, through which the super rich buy themselves citizenship around the world. Together with a group of data journalists, he assembled the names of those who bought it in Malta, one of the most popular places for buying citizenship.
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Caroline Muscat
Caroline Muscat is an award-winning investigative Maltese journalist and the founder of The Shift News, an online investigative news portal based on Malta.
She’s a well-known advocate for free press. Among other things, her work focuses on exposing the truth behind Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination and holding people in power accountable for their actions.
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Jennifer Craig
Jennifer Craig is a special education teacher and was the president of the Ohio County Education Association.
She became the informal leader of the 2018 teachers strike in West Virginia, where teachers protested against unaffordable healthcare costs and very low pay raises that didn’t keep up with inflation.
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Peter S. Goodman
The global economic correspondent at the New York Times and an award-winning journalist. He played a leading role in the coverage of the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession. Goodman began his professional journey as a freelance reporter in Southeast Asia, and has since reported from more than three dozen countries.
He’s known for his work exposing the cosmic lie advanced by the billionaire class - the demonstrably false logic that tax breaks for the super-rich trickle down to the rest of society.
His books include Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy (2009) and Davos Man: How Billionaires Devoured the World. (2022)
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Chris Smalls
Chris Smalls is an American labour organiser known for his role in leading the Amazon worker organisation in Staten Island. He is the founder and president of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) since 2021. He was fired from Amazon in 2020 and is supporting himself through a union stipend from the ALU GoFundMe.
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Rob Robinson
Housing organizer and social activist based in New York City. After successfully escaping his own cycle of homelessness, he’s been a leading voice in helping others out of the same struggle. For years, he’s been a prominent figure and advisor for multiple housing right organizations, campaigns and coalitions. He often collaborates with international organizations to include a global perspective in his strive for more equitable housing legislation.
Rob was chosen as the NYC chairperson for the official visit of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing.
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Sven Hughes
Sven Hughes is a former British military specialist in psychological operations. For the past twenty years, he’s worked at the heart of geostrategic influence as a prime ministerial and presidential advisor, and as a global expert in counter violent extremism techniques.
With inside knowledge on the strategic communication techniques of election campaigns, Hughes maps out how and where the money flows in this billion-dollar industry. Additionally, he reveals how the corporations paying the bills for strategic communication expect something in return once they’ve put their chosen rule-bending politician in a position of power. For instance, legislation that benefits them in return, write-offs etc.
Books: Verbalisation: The power of words to drive change (2017), Selling St. Christopher (2020) and The Seal of Confession (2021)
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Melissa Briones
Professional modern dancer from Chile. Participant of several dance talent competitions and a public figure in TV. She studied at the Modern School of Music and Dance, where she received a scholarship and fronted the institution's poster. Uses her performative dancing as a form of activism.
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Ivanna Olivares Miranda
Ivanna graduated from the University of Valparaiso, to become a history teacher. She's a climate activist for ‘Modatima Choapa’ and a representative of ‘Chile del Movimiento por los protocolos de Abya Yala’. She’s also the President of the Indigenous Diaguita community Taucán.
After years of advocacy for indigenous rights and climate activism, Olivares Miranda is an elected constituent of the Chilean constitutional convention since 2021. Her proposal aims towards a democratic and inclusive country, where a feminist, ecocentric and decolonialist approach is crucial for the future of Chile.
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Valentina Miranda
Valentina Miranda is an indigenous politician that assumed office in 2021, elected as the youngest constituent in Chilean history at only 21 years old.
Miranda’s work focuses on the human rights to adequate housing, access to water and sanitation, actively advocating for worker’s rights, the principle of salary protection, and climate action.
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Andrea Catalina Gana Muñoz
Visual artist with a bachelor of arts and aesthetics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and now professor of mapping at the university of Chile. Co-founder of Delight lab, together with her brother Octavio.
Delight lab is known for projecting large mapping installations. On the first day of Chile’s uprising they projected the word “Equidad” (Equality) over a main square in Santiago which was the beginning of a viral movement where they continuously projected words and symbols of hope on city buildings.
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Germán Octavio Gana Muñoz
Designer educated at the University of Chile and interdisciplinary artist. Co-founder of Delight lab with his sister Andrea.
Delight lab is known for projecting large mapping installations. On the first day of Chile’s uprising they projected the word “Equidad” (Equality) over a main square in Santiago which was the beginning of a viral movement where they continuously projected words and symbols of hope on city buildings.
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Paloma Rodriguez
Painter and goldsmith, born in Chile, graduated from Fine Arts. Rodriguez paints fictional scenarios with the intention to trigger or provoke spectators and for them to start a personal and creative thought process from their experience of her work.
Creative Team
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Fredrik Gertten
DIRECTOR
Fredrik Gertten is an award-winning Swedish director. He’s famous for local stories with a global impact, with films like PUSH (2019), JOZI GOLD (2019), Bikes vs Cars (2015), Big Boys Gone Bananas!* (2011) and Bananas!* (2009). He’s also the founder of the production company WG Film – one of Sweden’s most prominent documentary production companies. Here he combines filmmaking with a role as creative producer. In October 2017, Fredrik was named Honorary Doctor at Malmö University’s Faculty of Culture and Society for his work as a documentary filmmaker. He’s also a co-host of the podcast PUSHBACK Talks together with Leilani Farha.
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Margarete Jangård
PRODUCER
Margarete Jangård has a long track record of producing internationally successful, author-driven creative documentaries for both cinema and TV. She stands behind films such as DAUGHTERS (2020), FOR SOMEBODY ELSE (2020), JOZI GOLD (2019), PUSH (2019), Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas (2017), Big Boys Gone Bananas!* (2011), Bananas!* (2009) and many more. Since 2003, she’s been a producer at WG Film in Malmö, Sweden. Over the years, she’s widened the company’s network internationally, where both WG Film and Margarete have become well reputed producers of creative documentaries.
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Benjamin Binderup
EDITOR
Benjamin Binderup started his career with music videos and commercials. After graduating at NFTS in 2005, he has worked on several feature films and drama series such as Summer of ´92 (2015), 1864 (2014), & Borgen (2010-2022). He has previously worked with Fredrik Gertten on the award-winning Big Boys Gone Bananas!* (2011) and Bikes vs Cars (2015). -
Florencia Di Concilio
COMPOSER
Hailed by the international press, Florencia Di Concilio is one of the most prolific and versatile artists of the new generation of music composers.
She recently composed the original score to Nobel Prize laureate Annie Ernaux's Les Années Super 8 (2022), and Les Cinq Diables (2022), by Léa Mysius, both films premiering at the Cannes Film Festival. She also wrote the original music for Dark Blood (2012), Just Kids (2019), the Original Netflix Series Trial 4 (2020) and much more.
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Janice d'Avila
Janice d’Avila, ABC, is a director of photography that has lensed documentaries like Elena (2012), by Petra Costa, PUSH (2019) by Fredrik Gertten, the Beginning of Life (2016) by Estela Renner and more recently Ecstasy (2020), by Moara Passoni, all award-winning films that had been shown in the most important doc festivals around the world.
She has also shot many series for Netflix, HBO, NatGeo, UFC Channel and Globo.
Director’s Note
Anger. Frustration. Injustice. The notion of the divide just getting bigger. I wanted to understand how the superrich, the money maximisers, have gained control over the bulk of political and economic life, also in traditionally stable democracies. I had the notion that the rage, the uprisings we see around the world have a lot in common, no matter if it’s Black Lives Matter, the women in Iran, the protesters in China or the rebellion in Chile; it’s all about the same unfairness. The frustration that comes when all doors are closed, no matter how hard you work. The breakdown of the social contract. I wanted to make a film that can help change the conversation. A way out of depression. Pessimism and cynicism make us passive; we need to see that change is possible. Listen to the child within us, that moral compass of right and wrong.
Two words. Kleptocracy and Extractivism. If we find language to explain what we are up against, the conversation will be sharper. For me, kleptocracy is a better word than corruption. Because it also includes the legal ways of stealing from others. Lobbying politics to bend the rules, so it suits your business at the cost of the public interest. Moving money to tax paradises, a place where criminal and legal money meet and merge.
The countries in my film are selected because they in some ways represent a global pattern. Malta a microcosm of corruption, West Virginia a poor state where coal, gas and oil have been extracted for a century. Resistance and anger exists everywhere, I tell stories of unionising in the US. In Chile, the social outbreak in 2019 managed to move beyond violence into a movement asking for a new constitution. This process has been extremely interesting. Almost like a re-writing of a social contract.
Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was investigating the Malta Golden Passport scheme when she got assassinated in 2017. Citizenship by investment is a way for the kleptocrats to distribute their identities and wealth so it’s harder to track them down. Extraction is about taking. And giving nothing back. The classic understanding is extraction of oil or minerals. This absurd reality that people who live close to the extraction are poorer than people in the cities where the money lands. In my previous film PUSH we talked about financial extractivism, for example gentrification or financialization of our cities where investors buy homes without a care for the building or the community it may serve. The building is converted into a financial asset to buy and sell.
Breaking Social is a sister film to Big Boys Gone Bananas!*, Bikes vs Cars and Push. In the films, I try to understand how big money has undermined democracy and changed our societies on a systemic level. A film about the breaking of social contract but also the Social Breaking in society, that turning point when people step out on the streets and say: It’s enough!
My hope is that this film will make it easier for us to talk about what we are up against. It's not rocket science. All of us have this feeling that there’s something wrong. Often, we know a lot of details, but we struggle to put things together. My aim with this film is to connect some of these dots. I hope people come out and have some sort of ‘A-h-a’ moment, where they realize it’s actually quite simple. And I like what Rutger Bregman says in the film, that “when we start asking questions, when we start being angry; then change has already started”.