with “Intouchables”, he helped change the way people look at disability

His story had inspired one of the biggest successes in the history of French cinema. “Untouchables” and its 20 million entries which tells the singular relationship between a tetraplegic and his carer. “Forever in our hearts“, reacted Omar Sy, Friday, June 2 in the afternoon on social networks. The two directors of the film have meanwhile expressed their immense sadness. In “Untouchables“, François Cluzet played Philippe Pozzo di Borgo, a wealthy businessman who became a quadriplegic in 1993, after a paragliding accident.

A philosophy of life

In a book, he had recounted this atypical meeting with the one whom Omar Sy embodied on the screen. The two men had testified on a television program in 2002. For the film to be made, he had set one condition: that it be a comedy. He had also obtained that 5% of the film’s profits be donated to the association he headed, allowing him to finance several infrastructures for the disabled, beyond all expectations.

Philippe Pozzo di Borgo had drawn from his disability a philosophy of life, an unfailing optimism, which, with the help of cinema, contributed to changing the way people look at disability.