_7 billion Others

Available online in ten languages, 7 billion Others is a participatory documentary project with global scope. Launched as 6 billion Others in 2003 by photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and authors Sybille d’Orgeval and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire, the project aims to reveal what unites—and divides—the seven billion people on Earth. Over the course of a decade, a team of 20 filmmakers gathered 6,000 “testimonies” from the residents of 84 countries. The interviewees answered the same set of questions, touching on universal themes: What does love mean to you? What have you learned from your parents? What do you want to pass on to your children?

The filmmakers edited the interviews into dozens of short films. Broadcast in over 100 countries, these shorts are supplemented online by a browsable grid of testimonies that can be accessed by clicking on the image of an interviewee. Website visitors can also participate in 7 billion Others by answering any of the filmmakers’ questions and uploading their responses.

7 billion Others spans platforms. In addition to the website and television broadcasts, the project has been mounted as an installation in public spaces worldwide. The 7 billion Others team estimates that more than four million people have viewed the installation in places as diverse as Paris’s Grand Palais, Shanghai’s World Expo, Sao Paulo’s MASP, Roma’s Mercati di Triano, Moscow’s Multimedia Art Museum, Brussels’s Tours & Taxis, the Douta Seck Cultural Center in Dakar, Senegal, and the Caribbean museum of Barranquilla, Colombia.