The most important lesson we took from producing our film ‘Purpose’ was this: Only because you manage to make a film doesn’t mean it will be seen by anyone.
Either you are part of a massive media machine that advertises and pushes the film to thousands of cinemas, hundreds of thousands of people on TV channels, or millions on streaming platforms.
Or you are on your own.
To be precise, you may think you are on your own — until a miracle happens.
Exactly one year ago — on June 11, 2024 — we celebrated the world premiere of ‘Purpose’ at the Wellbeing Economy Forum in Reykjavík, Iceland. But despite the Wellbeing Economy Alliance‘s amazing support in making this happen, and despite the Icelandic Government’s kind invitation, this didn’t mean the film was getting seen by actual audiences. Sure, some 60 wonderful people were in the room that day; the evening was unforgettable. But you don’t work on a film for six and a half years to show it to 60 people. You want it to go out into the world and conquer audiences.
So how do you do that?
When I returned from Iceland, I began marketing ‘Purpose’ with the little I had — a LinkedIn account, a small newsletter, time, and a lot of enthusiasm. Soon after, my friend Juan Pistone joined me. He added his own creativity and strategic capabilities. We were posting online, sending out newsletters, linking to the trailers, trying to get the word out.
And while that’s all good and fair … if this had been all, we would have been dead in the water. You cannot promote a feature length film with a couple of posts on tiny social media accounts. It just doesn’t work.
You need a miracle.
And what can I tell you — people came and made a miracle.
It started with Katherine Trebeck and Lorenzo Fioramonti. The two main protagonists of ‘Purpose’ were our first and most important supporters, telling colleagues, followers and friends that the film was available for screenings. At the same time, the Wellbeing Economy Alliance was there for us, too. They provided meetings, platforms and communications to tell people about ‘Purpose’. And on it went — at the German premiere in November, Earth4All, Hot or Cool, Greenpeace, Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, and the EconGood movement supported us. Attac groups across Germany asked about the film and started showing it. Remarkable people in Australia, Austria or Denmark filled entire movie theatres. We were invited to a Scotland tour, a Nordic tour, and visited Jersey and Guernsey with the film. And so forth, and so on.
There is no way to do justice to everyone who was there to make it happen, and we apologise for that. We are incredibly grateful to each and every one of you.
Last night’s screening in St. Pölten (Austria) marks our 100th event with the film — exactly one year after the premiere. Now, more than 5,000 people have seen the film.
Of course, we tend to measure success in big numbers and social media likes. Through that lens, 5,000 might not seem like much. But from a perspective of hope for the common good, from the perspective of wellbeing for people and planet, it’s the beginning of something. We believe in conversations about what truly matters — and for that, anonymous digital experiences through screens are not sufficient. Instead, we need to meet, share quality time, debate, and jointly decide to take action.
We have seen time and time again that our film provides exactly the space and time that are needed for these conversations.
This means: We have not only shown the film to 5,000 people. We were given the chance to begin a conversation with 5,000 people — which will continue to thread through our societies and our public consciousness. Meanwhile, we will continue showing the film with anyone who wants to do this — hoping for more miracles, more ripple effects, and more conversations. No algorithm can calculate how much of this we need to change our system. We can’t either, but we work every day convinced this is the way forward.
And we’re all in.
