A year ago, my close friend and flatmate took her own life. She can no longer tell me exactly what made her do it. She may have had countless reasons. But one question has been on my mind ever since: could there be a world in which she would have liked to live? A world in which people are not left alone with their problems, in which we would have the time and space to really deal with the needs of others? A world full of care?
To find out, we meet people who have put caring at the centre of their lives. There is the Hamburg snout Arnold, who looks after his severely disabled son 24 hours a day and crosses the country in his self-built houseboat to protest against his situation. Polish 24-hour carer Bożena, who occasionally gives her 90-year-old patient a punk hairstyle for fun and helps other carers fight for her rights. Indigenous climate activist Amanda, who no longer wants to see her family's healthy habitat in Peru destroyed by the climate crisis. And wheelchair user Samuel, who loves to spend his nights in the sauna with his friends and is organising an inclusive house project.
But they all have to painfully realise that caring in our world is anything but easy: while they sustain life every day, they are often at the end of their tether. The public hardly notices or even appreciates this. Now they have had enough: they have stopped accepting that there is neither time nor money in our society to take good care of themselves and others. They want everything to change. But how is that supposed to happen?