Artist Ai Wei Wei's doc 'Human Flow'; actor-director-producer Giancarlo Esposito

The act of starting of this film after I got my passport back actually from the Chinese authority so I can start travel. I settled myself in Berlin and then I heard some refugees already come to Berlin. So I went to Lesbos, Greece to see how would they come on the shore.

I met them and the moment I start to use my iPhone to shoot because it's not prepared. I was vacation with my son and girlfriend. So that moment I decide I have to make a film about this because what I have seen is unbelievable. And you see women, children jump out of a boat and they're totally foreign. They're from Syria and nobody understands their language, their religion, and even customs. I was shocked and I said to myself I want to find out who they are, why they have to give up their land and come to here.

The only way I feel is to get involved as individual artists. Get myself involved to learn about a situation because nobody can understand the total picture. To be in those locations, to study the history, to study very different kind of refugees. So it's education of myself to know that. Because, as artist, I have to know it. ... This film is as a result of this learning process.

Personally, when I grew up, I have the experience of being in a refugee-like situation because my father was poet, exiled. And 20 years I grew up in very remote area, our family being pictured as somewhat dangerous, different. My father is a poet, so for 20 years he's forbidden to even write a line. So you can see how wrong those kind of pictures can really affect a society as a result China has been punished its own best mind to make China like today still without freedom of speech, still doesn't stand up for standard human rights practice.

Doesn't matter [if]  you're west, you're right or left, people still avoid to really find out what made those refugees a refugee. But rather than trying to find some tactics, local tactics to shut the door and keep them out of sight and say, That's your problem -- solve it. It's not related to understanding of human condition and human rights and the human dignity. I think by doing that, it's very, very dangerous especially for the United States and Europe. Not bearing responsibility and not leading the world to give important message -- "humans as one." We have to help each other otherwise the condition can become much worse.

Drones [are] a technology. Any new technology is questionable morally or aesthetically because it's never established that view of the view of the god or the birds. But today, the drones are so common. ... But when we use it, we very clearly understand to really try to limit... not to abuse that type of the drone. It's a very special visual effect to give very essential analyzing about human beings' relations in relation to nature, their location and the mass movement. And also to give some kind of detached feeling about when we're a little bit further, and we're a little bit from very above. You know, humans all look just like ants or some little box there. So that can give us a very special angle to make a film in this kind of scale. And also can help us to wrap up and then jump into another location because this film comes to so many locations. You always need to take a deep breath so the drones give us that chance.

Understanding of humanity is above all. It's about, We're all the same. If someone being hurt, we are being hurt. So that kind of ideology has to be shared only by doing that have we had compassion for other people. We lost our home too. So that kind of ideology has to be shared only by doing so that have we have compassion for other people. We can tolerate something we'd normally think is so so foreign and so different. Someone lost their education, you feel, Oh, that could be my son. Some women have no place to deliver their children, you will say, That could be my mom or my wife. So those things we have to sounds very simple but we have to repeatedly talk about that. That makes us better as a society.

I got a hold of this material when I lived in Connecticut. I was completely bankrupt and losing my home. My office was in my living room. I couldn't get a job. I had my fourth daughter, my fourth child, and I was completely shattered. The week I got this script a few days before I received it I got a book that was called "Who Moved My Cheese" from a friend. A thin book about a mouse who was the provided of his family and it was about recreating yourself. I was at my wit's end thinking that the only way out was to take my life for the insurance money, so that my children would have a life.



It was about nine years ago. And I couldn't believe that I was really thinking about this. But I was and it was a serious thought. And so I got this book from a dear friend. It changed my outlook, it gave me a little bit of hope but it didn't give me a job and there was no one else to borrow money from. And I got this script and it changed my life. It wasn't the script that we shot but it certainly had all of the elements of film that I wanted to make. I particularly related to the character of Mason who really was an earnest person. All he wanted to do was work. And he was unable to provide for his family and I related to that character so much that I knew that one day I would make this film. Not only to show people in desperate situations what their choices might be -- because when you're desperate you don't think you have any choices -- but also to show how, in many ways, we have to believe not only in who we are but we create in our mind's eye, in our spirit, we create a space for opportunity to take place and for us to change our lives at any given moment. It is a choice.

Actor, director and producer Giancarlo Esposito on "The Show."

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One of the major things that happened about nine, ten years ago in our business in Hollywood, in film and television, is that we have tentpole movies which pay one star quite a bit of their budget. And so it was around the time that many of our great actors were getting 10, 15, 20 million dollars a picture. And so the character actor was left behind. If you didn't take scale plus ten -- very low payment for your work -- then you wouldn't work. And if you are an actor who was in between those places, known as a character actor, known for good work, then you'd have to bite the bullet and work for nothing in various different venues. So that's what was going on in the business and I certainly wanted to not only make my mark but I do what I do because I love it. I don't do it for the money. I don't do it for the glory, now that I've slain a bit of my ego, although it's healthy to keep some part of that ego going, I do it out of love of creation. And sometimes when you operate that way, you forget that there's a value on what you do especially and specifically if you have a family to raise.

I will be called on the carpet for making a political statement, a human statement. And maybe being insensitive to certain parts of our society of human beings who, like me, felt like there was no other way to go and I have to get out of this life. Not understanding within that moment that life is precious. I know now if I go all the way down and have nothing I will be in service in whatever way I can to other human beings because that's the juice. It's not the bank account. It's not my notoriety. It's not the glory. I realize that it is to fulfill our earthly obligation and to do it in a way that puts a smile on our face. That is truly the way to live life.