“A society that excludes anyone is a sick society“

Alexandre Jollien is a philosopher and writer. At birth, he was strangled by his umbilical cord causing him a disability. “The philosophers said that one of the first steps towards freedom is to free oneself from the gaze of the other and I think that today there are overwhelming social standards, one must be beautiful, we must be nickel, and that puts a lot of people on the sidelines“, he believes. On the poster of “Almost“, a film he co-directed with Bernard Campan, Alexandre Jollien deplores a society where people are too easily labeled when they are not known. “Me, I dream of a freer and more generous society“, he explains.

Now the father of three children, his fatherhood allowed him to understand what he never had when he was younger, “that is to say the lightness, the carelessness” Finally, the philosopher particularly believes in joy, more than happiness, which is, according to him, “a marketing trick”. “Be happy!”, it is an injunction which, again, puts many people on the sidelines“, concludes Alexander.