Director Philippe Diaz filming in Sucre, Bolivia.

It’s fitting that Philippe Diaz’s film The End of Poverty? ends in a question mark as he asks questions and explores the history and possibility of ending poverty rather than telling you anything definitive.  The question mark also serves as a question to the audience about whether or not they want to do anything to help end it.  And after seeing the film you definitely are prepared to make better choices in your own life when it comes to solving the problems that create the disparity between the rich and poor.  It does a great job of starting at the root of the problem of poverty, working up to the present day and keeping things as complex as they can be in a two hour film.

I recently had the opportunity to ask Philippe Diaz some questions about the film and his hopes for what people take away from it.

TAKEPART: I know that the project started when the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation approached you about making a film on poverty, can you talk a little bit about the process you went through from there to make The End of Poverty? the film that it is today?

PHILPPE DIAZ: First of all I did approximately 6 months of research and proposed several outlines to the foundation, explaining to them clearly that I wasn’t ready to make a film on the ideas of Henry George alone, even if foundation was created to defend such ideas. I have a lot of respect for George’s ideas — he is the first one who came up with the concept that progress doesn’t alleviate poverty but creates poverty — but many other thinkers came after him and went much farther than he was able to in his time. The foundation finally agreed to one of my outlines, giving me total freedom to do the movie I had in mind. The interviews with the experts and the poor people on the ground moved the movie in the direction it is today.

TP: How did you decide which countries would be the one’s the film focuses on?

PD: We chose the countries based on the specific topics I wanted to develop in the film. For example land is the main resource in Kenya when Silver mining in Bolivia was what made the European empires what they are today, etc. I was also very concerned to find countries that are ready to acknowledge the poverty problem they have. To that day, many countries with conservative government, are not ready to acknowledge the poverty they have, even if one can see it in every street.

TP: I love the film’s mix of historical perspective and present day issues, how hard was it to find balance between the two?

PD: It was very difficult. The first cut of the film was 3 hours long and included a much longer historical introduction. I know, and realized that even more touring with the film in more than 30 international festivals, that people relate more to what’s going on in present time than with what happened 500 years ago. It is why I cut out a lot of historical content. That said, without the historical part, I don’t think we can understand that modern poverty was created when the first globalization phase occurred which is 500 years ago.

TP: Martin Sheen’s voice is such a powerful presence in the film, how did you get him involved?

PD: When we got the news that the film was selected at the Cannes Film Festival, the film wasn’t finished. We struggled for weeks with teams working 24 hours a day, to finish the film. I didn’t have a narrator and started to put the word out that I desperately needed one, and the first to answer enthusiastically was Martin who did it immediately, asking us only to give a donation to a charity of his choice.

TP: What was the hardest part about making the film?

PD: It terms of content it was to explain as simply as possible a phenomenon 500 years in the making and that involved very complex issues from capital flow to free market economies. In terms of shooting it was to be confronted with the most horrible suffering all day long and feel that we were responsible for it.

TP: CinemaLibre is a company that works with the belief that films can make a difference, how do you hope The End of Poverty? will be able to make a difference? What type of social action plan do you have?

I think the most important is to create awareness for this issue. Ten years ago nobody was talking about global warming but the specialized experts. Now it’s everywhere including in commercials. I personally believe that the poverty issue is much more urgent and dramatic than global warming. Every day 20,000 children die because of the poverty level that we — in the country of the North — imposed on them. If — as an expert in the film explains — we are consuming every year 30% more than what the planet can regenerate, and because the world population increases every year, it means that for us in the countries of the North, to be able to maintain our great lifestyles, we will have to plunge more and more people below the poverty line in the countries of the South. As another expert in the film says, our chosen economic system leads to the sacrifice of some people and in massive numbers everyday. Another goal is to make our politicians understand — and for the same reason described above — that development strategies will not alleviate poverty, no more than the easy remedies prescribed by our famous experts like Jeffrey Sachs of providing mosquito nets and fertilizers will.

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THE END OF POVERTY? opens in New York City this Friday, 11/13 and across the country in the coming weeks. Find a complete screening schedule HERE.

Children play with an empty water bottle in the streets of Kibera, just kilometers outside of Nairobi.