Stories of a Generation - with Pope Francis (2021–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Episode #1.1 - full transcript

Good evening.

Thank you.

So much stuff, huh?

Yeah, it's a… a noise.

It's a bit like the sea breeze,
one could say.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.
Can you hear me or not?

- Yes? It's okay?
- We can start.

For me, today,

it is important for the future of humanity
that young people talk to the old.

The baby's first video, uh, taken by me.



- Do you like tango?
- Yes.

- Have you ever danced it?
- Yes.

It's ordinary people who make history.

I'm taking the biggest risk of my life.

I'm the only survivor.

Never be indifferent to anything.

IT SEEMS LIKE YESTERDAY

Not revenge,
not retaliation either,

simply love.

I dream about making the planet a better place.

If you see somebody hurtin',
just reach out and give 'em a hug.

- Together we can!
- Together we can!

- Together we will!
- Together we will!

♪ If I wanna doo-doo
Doo-doo-dn-doo-doo, I will ♪



♪ I shall, I can ♪

♪ You see a face
But I see butterfly wings ♪

♪ A song is time that sings ♪

♪ I want a place in the sun
That shines in the rain ♪

♪ A song is time explained ♪

♪ I can get everything everywhere ♪

♪ I can get everything everywhere ♪

Holy Father, what is love?

I may as well ask you, "What is air?"

Yes, I can tell you
that love is a feeling,

like electric waves in an organism.

It works in such a way
that, when they meet,

poles attract each other.

There are scientific explanations,
but what is love exactly?

When I hear confessions
from young married couples,

I ask them one question.

"Do you play with your kids?"

This is key,

the gratuitousness of play.

Love is free or it is not love.

Oh no.

Francesca, are you gonna
take a picture of something?

My name is Martin Scorsese.
I'm 79 years old.

- I see you.
- If I move back, you follow me?

- Uh-huh.
- Come forward.

I'm a… a filmmaker from New York.

Now, are you gonna go up,
and I can give you a... read you a story?

Uh-huh, yeah, but,
Daddy, I want to take a picture of this

cow.

- How's this?
- Good.

I'm a father to three daughters.

Catherine, Domenica, and Francesca.

What was the example of love
that your parents gave you?

My mother was very strong.

Uh, you know, um,
my father was very stern,

really trying
to uphold the old traditions.

And there was a lot of tension.

I was in the middle of every discussion,
good, bad, indifferent.

But I think
they were tied together somehow,

in a… a…

- It's beyond words or emotions.
- Really?

They were tied together in the spirit.

Lovey-dovey, sort of, you know.

They say, "As you get older,
your love grows stronger."

So, for some reason,
it is getting a little stronger, you know.

Right, Daddy?

- He's bashful.
- Yeah, I know.

Yeah, it was definitely a spiritual bond…
that, uh… I can't describe.

Do you think you and
mom have that kind of connection?

Yeah, I think so. I think so.

I turn around, it's been 24 years.

Mm-hmm.

Beautiful.

Mac, come here.

Come here, baby, come on! Come over here.

And he goes to you.

There you are, my dear.

It's you.

Do you remember
your first date with my mom?

Yeah, it was in my mid-fifties,
so a whole life had gone by.

- Mm.
- I had two beautiful daughters.

But the marriages
to their mothers had ended.

There was something missing.

And that day, she said, "I'd like to take you to a special place."

It was called
the Jardin Majorelle, in Marrakech.

And the walls and the chairs

and all of the objects, uh,
painted this, uh, shade of a deep blue.

It was really unlike anything
I'd experienced before.

And it was kind of magical.

And something kind of changed.

A year later, we're in New York,
we're hanging, we're living together,

and we found out
we were able to have a child.

And then you came!

- This was a shock.
- Yeah.

And then... it has to move.
We have to do it.

We've got to take care of your mom,
take care of you. There's a...

- Chaos!
- Chaos! You know, yeah.

- Aw.
- Nice and peaceful.

At that age, I couldn't have imagined
my life could change that much.

When you're a
mother, and you're blessed

with the birth of a child
the love is immense.

It grows with the years.
Every day you love your children more.

You love them more.

My name is Estela Barnes de Carlotto.

I was born in Buenos Aires,
in the capital.

I am 90 years old, a bit older.

And I am President of the Abuelas
de la Plaza de Mayo Association…

which has existed for almost 44 years.

A coup d'état,
an atrocious military dictatorship,

30,000 disappeared,
dead, political prisoners,

children that we still have not recovered.

Justice!
Justice! Justice! Justice! Justice!

The civil-military dictatorship

kidnapped the oldest
of my four daughters, Laura,

who was six months pregnant,

and spent nine months
in a secret detention center,

where her son was born.

The day he was born, they stole him.

She was pretty, right?

She was thin, very thin.

She was murdered.

And I was only given her body

by special request.

I swore

at her grave

that I wouldn't stop even for one day…

WE ARE LOOKING FOR TWO GENERATIONS

…seeking justice for her and the others,
and looking for her son.

RESTITUTION OF MISSING CHILDREN
TO THEIR FAMILIES

MISSING CHILDREN

You loved
your Grandma Rosa very much.

- Yes, I did.
- What was your relationship like?

Well, like any other
child with his grandmother, right?

It was sweet.

What was most remarkable about her was…

If I had to describe Grandma Rosa
in one word, it would be "silence".

She would go out with us
and hold us. Yeah.

But she always…

had those moments of silence.

She was a woman of patience.
And she suffered a lot. A lot.

For me, love is returning life to people,

as well as returning life to myself.

My name is Vito Fiorino.

I'm 72 years old, and I live in Lampedusa.

I'm an ice-cream
maker.

On the night of October 3rd, 2013,

I was with seven friends.

We decided to go out to sea
because the sea was beautiful,

wind was blowing…

I looked through the porthole as the sun
was starting to rise.

What I saw in front of me was horrific.

At least 200 people in the sea,

asking for help.

They were screaming and screaming.

The worst immigration tragedy

in the Mediterranean Sea,
in the waters off Lampedusa.

There may be hundreds dead.

They were Eritrean and Somalian refugees
fleeing their countries.

They were on a boat
which sank a few meters off Conigli Beach.

With my boat, I saved 47 people.

And since then, my life has changed.

When I first moved to Lampedusa,
I was 51 years old.

I'd been separated from my wife for years.

My children had all grown up.

I don't remember receiving
a kiss from my parents.

It's turned me into someone
who is unable, as a father…

to give a kiss, a hug to my children.

So I tried again.
I tried again with these kids.

Because the youngest
I rescued was only 13.

We've created a family bond now.

I have this sense of being a father
to these kids somehow.

- Hello, Vito.
- Hi, Manuel.

- Hello.
- Hi, Vito.

- Rezene, how are you doing?
- Good, good. And you?

I'm really happy to see you here
all together again.

- I mean…
- Good to see you.

They're smarter than I am.

They can say a lot of words
in Italian when we speak.

One of these days we'll have to teach you Tigrinya.

We can try. We'll try.

Ambassanger is saying
that we always talk about you,

and you'll always have
a place in our hearts.

Thank you.
Thank you, Vito. Thank you so much.

- I love you. Bye.
- Thank you.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Tomorrow, one of them that I rescued, Tedese,

is coming to visit me in Lampedusa.

We're trying to move past
that difficult day together.

Laura, when she was in college,

became a member
of the Peronista University Youth.

…we're going to win.
We are going to win this fight.

And there were
street demonstrations and marches.

The young people
of the 1970s wanted a change.

We were witnesses,
night and day, of the kidnappings.

It was students above all,
and anyone who bothered the dictatorship.

Laura lived with her companions

in different places that
she didn't want us to know about.

She would send me letters
through an intermediary.

She called me on the phone once a week.

I didn't know she was pregnant.

She hadn't been able to tell me.

In her letters she'd say,
"I'm getting fatter."

"We'll see each other on a beach trip,"

or "We're going to chat, Mom."
She had that joy.

Until the day that we didn't get
any more communication from her.

No more phone calls.

No more letters.

And then we thought…
she must've been kidnapped.

How did we find
out that Laura was pregnant?

Thanks to a woman released
from the same secret detention center

where she had spent nine months.

NAVY SCHOOL OF MECHANICS

Before the woman got out,
Laura asked her to go see her father

and tell him that she was fine,
that she was six months pregnant,

that if it was a boy,
she'd name him Guido, after her father.

That's when we were relieved.
She was alive.

She could be released as others had been.

It was an illusion, a bit of hope,

to wait for that grandchild, to raise him.

We had the hope
that our children would come back,

because what had they done?

♪ Siboney ♪

♪ I love you ♪

♪ I'm dying for your love ♪

♪ Siboney… ♪

My name is Carlos
Solís. I was born in 1937.

I'm an ophthalmologist.

I'm married to Cristina Castelara.

I've been married
to Carlos for 55 years,

and we have four daughters
and six grandchildren.

My granddaughter, the one
who turned 26 yesterday, said to me,

"One question, Grandma,
how many men have you slept with?

I said, "Only your grandpa."

"Grandma, just him?
That's all?"

She was astonished.

- She must find it very strange.
- Strange indeed.

It was my idea
to learn how to dance tango.

It was my idea.

I was 60 and he was 66 when we started.

We were alone. Even our youngest
daughter was no longer living with us.

She was over 30 years old.

I proposed lessons to Carlos,
and he told me,

"No, Cristina,
I can't waste my time. I have to study."

In order to live together,
you have to make concessions

now and then, right?

The right attitude
is to be like a politician

sit down and talk it over.

But then he said,
"No, I won't let you go alone."

"If you're so interested,
we can do it twice a week."

"Of course," I said.

One day we were in class,

and the teacher said,
"Hey, everyone, let's change partners."

And Carlos didn't want to.

"Tell me something,
didn't we come here to be together

and have fun together?"

- Thank you very much, Carlos.
- You're welcome.

Right. From then on,
we only danced together.

To guide and be guided,

to take the responsibility
of caring for another.

These are images
of love and tenderness, aren't they?

Tango is a melody that is…
nostalgic and hopeful.

In January 1970,

I learned that a great artist was ill,

an Argentinean tango singer,

Azucena Maizani.

And I, who had only been
a priest for one month,

SOCIETY OF ACTORS AND COMPOSERS

I went to give her the last rites,
as we had been neighbors,

and I knew her.

The best thing this woman wrote,
because she also wrote tangos,

is the one called "Pero Yo Sé."

This happens, that happens, "but I know."

A tango always has a feeling of hope
for the future.

- Do you like tango?
- Yes.

- Have you ever danced it?
- Yes.

♪ But I know ♪

♪ That you live ♪

♪ In the depths of your heart ♪

♪ That you want to find oblivion ♪

♪ By switching
From a woman to another… ♪

Have you always been together,
and can you remember a particular moment...

Are you asking me this
because you know something?

♪ …for a cherished memory
And you start to cry ♪

Going out to sea became very hard for me, and it still is.

Every time I went sailing…

…if I happened to notice
a little wave moving in an unusual way,

I thought it was somebody
calling for help.

I decided to sell the Gamar,
because it was pointless to keep my boat.

Here it is.

Here it is.

It was a moonless night.
There were stars in the sky,

but there weren't enough
to light up the sea.

It was basically pitch black.

You could hear arms
splashing in the water.

You could hear screaming.

People screaming, people going under,

people losing their lives.

They couldn't help me.
They were too exhausted.

I was trying to grab them, drag them in.
I made them put their hands over here.

They slipped from my hand
because they were covered in fuel.

I really had to lean down,

grab their arms, try to help them.
I would lift one leg up, one arm…

I had three boys in front of me,
and two other women a bit farther away.

I couldn't make a choice.

Three was more than two.

So we rescued the three boys
who were closer to us,

and I just watched the two women sink.

I'm sure, when I meet with Tadese,

the two of us
will feel different emotions.

Of the people we rescued,
he was in the worst condition,

and he had to be airlifted to Palermo

because his life was hanging by a thread.

I've built this relationship with him.
He's like a son to me now.

It all remains to be discovered,
to be experienced.

Definitely to be experienced.

You're a father
when you take care of your child,

when you carry your child's miseries.

You suffer with it, and you go ahead.

You become a real father

not because you created a child.

No, that does not make you a father.

Biologically, yes,

but being a true father
means to transmit your being to the child,

not just to create one.

In life, what anoints you as father

is the commitment to life,
to the limits, to greatness,

to the development of that life
that you gave to use, that you saw grow.

C'mon, c'mon,
c'mon, c'mon, c'mon!

Mac, come here! Come here, baby!

If you have one,
what is your biggest regret?

Either in life or work?

I would have liked to have been able
to help raise my other daughters. Hmm.

Cathy, that was 1965.

I was in my 20s.

With Domenica, it was
ten years later. I was in my 30s.

And the thing I did miss, of course,
was being able to help raise them.

And that had a lot to do

with the obsession
to create something on film.

That overwhelmed, very, very much,
a lot of… of my personal life.

There's no...
I didn't know how to balance the two.

There is no balance between the two.
You have to do the two together.

I didn't know that.

It's very different
when you're in your late... late fifties.

Very different.
You're almost a different person.

Yeah.

And she just wanted to come out.
She was really determined.

She was dying to have
her picture taken by good old dad.

That's right.

The baby's first video, uh, taken by me.

Today is November 24th,

three o'clock or so.

Gonna get it now.

I'm gonna get you!

"They say an infant can't see,

but she opened her eyes."

"She looked at me."

"She was such a little bit of a thing,

but while I was holding her,
she opened her eyes."

Look at Dada. He wants to take a picture.

"I know she didn't really study my face."

"Memory can make a thing seem
to have been much more than it was,

but I know she did
look right into my eyes."

"That is something."

"And I'm glad I knew it
at the time because now,

my present situation,

now that I'm about to leave this world,

I realize there is nothing
more astonishing than a human face."

"And it's something
to do with incarnation."

"You feel your obligation to a child

when you have seen it and held it."

"Any human face is a claim on you

because you can't help
but understand the singularity of it,

the courage and the loneliness of it."

"But this is truest
of the face of an infant."

"And I consider that to be
one kind of vision as mystical as any."

- I love that.
- Yeah, it's quite beautiful.

Love is a mixture of empathy

and respect.

When you have empathy with another being,
whether it be animal or human,

you feel what they're feeling.

I'm Jane Goodall.

I was born loving animals

so I spent all my time
learning about nature.

Once you share your life
in a meaningful way

with a dog, a cat,
a rabbit, a horse, a pig, a bird,

you know perfectly well
we're not the only beings on the planet

with personalities, minds, and emotions,

and love.

For a while, I pretended to
all my friends that I could understand

what the cats and the dogs
were barking and yowling about.

There was a little second-hand bookshop,

and I found this small book
Tarzan of the Apes.

I just fell passionately in love
with this glorious lord of the jungle.

The wretched man went
and married the wrong Jane.

I was terribly jealous.

That's where my dream began.

I will grow up, go to Africa,
and live with wild animals.

David was the first chimpanzee
to allow me to follow him in the forest,

going through
a thick tangle of vegetation.

When I came through,

there was David sitting on the ground,

so I sat near him.

And lying on the ground
between us was a ripe red palm nut.

So I picked it up
and held it towards him on my hand.

He turned his head away.

So I put my hand closer,

and he then turned.
He looked directly into my eyes.

He reached out.

He took the nut with one movement.
He dropped it. He didn't want it.

But then he very gently
squeezed my fingers,

which is how
chimpanzees reassure each other.

And so in that moment,

I knew that we totally
understood each other.

When I'd been there about
one and a half years,

I got a letter from my mentor,
Louis Leakey,

saying, "Jane, you must get a degree."

"I've got you a place in Cambridge
University to do a PhD in ethology."

I'd never been to college.
I didn't know what ethology was.

So, anyway, I got to Cambridge.

Imagine my dismay

when so many of the professors
told me I'd done everything wrong.

Carlos!
Would you like a cheese sandwich?

Or would you prefer cake?

- Cake.
- Well, here it comes.

Great.

We met one another
in a very special way.

She was my girlfriend's friend.

And that girl, she told Cristina about me,
so she started to get to know me.

We fell in love
through an intermediary, in a way.

I was 14 at the time.

Well…

…he was short, but I liked him.

Oh, look how young we were, Carlos.

Oh, I look so funny.

I'm more passionate. He's calmer.

He's very cerebral.

But I don't think
I ever told him, "I love you."

No.

- You have to focus, Carlos.
- Yeah, sure.

Love, as we have experienced it,

is…

…a succession of adaptations
to each other.

Tango integrates that,

continuous embrace for the whole dance
and doing movements that we both enjoy.

In our relationship,
there was a turning point.

- I asked her to give me time.
- Three days.

I stopped coming to her house.

I remember that I…

He rang the doorbell,
and I went to open it for him,

"as usual," and here we are now.

When I think about
death, in the end, I already won.

We've raised a good family.

I've enjoyed my work and the tango.

There's a cartoon character from America.

A little boy was telling him,
"You know, Droopy,

someday we're all going to die."

And the little dog said,
"Yes, but what about all the other days."

Love can't be conceptualized.

For example,
this is an experience I went through,

and everyone
who's seriously ill goes through.

One of the things that
an ill person finds most annoying

is when the priest comes to visit him

and starts saying to him,
"God is with you," and so on.

Or the relative comes,
or the aunt, or the grandmother,

and they talk to him and talk and talk.

And they try to justify to him

that he has to have
a positive attitude in life.

Nothing gets through to him
because there is no love there.

To love a sick person
is to put oneself in his place.

And he wants to be looked at,

to be held by the hand,
and for you to keep quiet.

It is the way to express closeness.

Love is closeness.

I enjoyed the Hollywood film so much,

but I always wondered, like,
"Boy and girl go off into the sunset…"

I said,
"Well, they're in love and that's fine."

I always wondered
what happened after the end.

Because that's sort of the beginning.

The courtship, the love, the infatuation,

the breakup, the coming back together,
all of this, the testing, you know?

What happens afterwards?

I always really wanted
to learn how to love.

That was the thing.

You went in... inside the buffalo herd?

Yeah, in it with the freaking van!

- You gotta take your mother to do that.
- Uh, no.

No, no, come on.

Mac was growling out the window,
And we were like,

"Maybe we get out,"
and he was like…

"A lot of people wanna get out,

but there's been like,
hundreds of incidents," you know.

Gosh.

- Yeah, I know. I know. I know.
- It's genuinely tough there…

When Scorsese

came with his wife,

who was sick at that time,
and brought her,

he was the "big star."

Yet, he said, "She is what matters to me."

"She's more important
than all my successes,

than all my films,
than all the things I've done."

"This woman, she is what matters."
She was the priority.

He was completely vulnerable.

He didn't defend himself
against his wife's illness.

He showed his love.

That deserves more awards than his films,
which are excellent.

So Mac, why don't you play with Oscar?

There was this
man named Peter Maurin.

He was the co-founder
of the Catholic Worker with Dorothy Day.

He said, "If you find yourself
in a situation where there is no love,

you put love."

And putting love is active.

That doesn't mean you become an irritant,

and come around,
you know, throwing flowers and…

You have to find it in yourself to

pull back, give to the others.

Yeah.

You put it. See what happens.

On August 25th,
1978, the police summoned us.

They said, "I'm sorry to
tell you that Laura has died."

I stood up and said,
"Murderers. You killed her."

"Murderer," I said to him.

And he pulled out a revolver,
and he put it on the desk.

"Where is my grandson?"

"What are you talking about, ma'am?"
he asked me.

"I just have to give the body to you."

"If you want, you can take it now,

and don't ask questions."

I retired so I could go out in the morning
and come back at night,

to find him,

and to unite with other women who had
the same pain and were searching too.

The Abuelas de la Plaza
de Mayo of the Argentine Republic was born.

Justice,
Justice…

We were women dressed like that.

We wanted to see if together

we could help each other,
doing whatever we could think of.

We talked to judges.
We filed petitions of habeas corpus.

IT SEEMS LIKE YESTERDAY

FOUND CHILDREN

It was work… founded on love.

The years began to pass.

We found other grandchildren.

I was convinced
that I was going to find him,

no matter when or where.

I couldn't imagine

that at that moment,
in a small country town,

a young man named Ignacio

was beginning to question his origins.

Science wants
to quantify everything.

In Cambridge, I was being told,

"You can't have empathy
with your subjects."

"You've got to be cold and objective
to be a good scientist."

I shouldn't have
named the chimpanzees.

They should've had numbers.
That was scientific.

I couldn't talk about them
having personality

or minds capable of solving problems,

or certainly not emotions.

Why?

Because those were unique to humans.

I didn't argue with the professors.

I didn't confront them.

I just went on writing
about what I'd seen.

Old Flo was one of my very favorite chimpanzees.

She had this wonderful way
of playing with her offspring.

She would lie on her back,

take the wrist of the infant,

dangle it above her, and then
tickle until the little infant did…

…which is how they laugh.

And her youngest son, Flint,
was overly dependent on his mother,

riding on her back until she was so weak
she couldn't hold him.

Old Flo died very peacefully,
just crossing a stream.

And Flint, he sat on the riverbank,
and he looked down at her,

and he took her dead hand,
as he used to take it when she was alive

to force her to groom him,
which is comforting for them.

But, of course, nothing happened.
And that was the beginning of the end.

He wouldn't eat.

And three weeks after his mother died,

he died too.

And he clearly died of grief.

He just could not cope without his mother.

When my detailed descriptions
started circulating,

the scientists had to
start thinking differently.

Scientists had to admit

that we're not the only beings with
personalities, minds, and emotions.

- Together we can!
- Together we can!

- Together we will!
- Together we will!

So, if we could all just learn
to love and to respect,

the world would be a very different place.

- Hello, my boy.
- Vito!

Vito, Vito, Vito, Vito, Vito.

Great. Great.

- All good? How are you?
- Good. Good. You?

My goodness,
I can't believe it's been eight years.

Let's go. Come on. We can head out.

It's the same feeling
when you start a family

and the kids grow
up.

And every now and then, you say,

"How old is my child?"
And you say, "Mamma mia!"

Tadese, one night, he was on the phone,

and he said to the person
he was talking to,

as he handed the phone over,
"Let me hand you to my father."

And… I realized

that we were…

something important.

Every time someone
asked me to go out to sea,

I would always find a reason to decline.

Today, with Tadese,
I managed to gather some courage.

Currently, the refugee arrivals are nonstop.

People reach Lampedusa in huge numbers,

on rubber dinghies, boats, by any means.

This is the spot where you were.

If you believe your life matters
as much as anyone else's life…

you can't refuse to help.

There's a beautiful alpine song,

"In the art of climbing,

the most important thing
is not to not fall down,

but to not stay down."

There's always someone
who'll take your hand, right?

Which at the same time,

is the only morally correct way
to look down at a person from above,

when you help them up.

Any other way of looking down at a person

is not morally correct, not human.

If you want to love,
you can't be indifferent.

You have to get close
to approach the limits,

to approach the limits of human pain.

For 36 years,

I was denied the chance
to love my grandson.

And be loved by him.

One day,

finally, after 36 years…

Hello!

…they called me on the phone

and told me that
they had found my grandson!

It was the joy of…
of something very important for me

and for my family,
because Laura came back with him.

Laura is within him.

And he can only imagine her

and dream of her.

♪ If I wanna doo-doo
Doo-doo-dn-doo-doo, I will… ♪

Holy Father, let us change
the subject and talk about dreams.

A person who is not capable of dreaming

is missing something,

is a sterile person.

And sterile is fine
for operating rooms, but not for life.

♪ I can get everything everywhere ♪

♪ I can get everything everywhere ♪

♪ I can get everything everywhere ♪

♪ I can get everything everywhere ♪

♪ Everyone can't get me ♪

♪ Anywhere ♪

♪ Except where I want to be ♪

♪ If you look to find me ♪

♪ You will see ♪

♪ I'm right where I want to be ♪

♪ Doo-doo, doo-dn-doo-doo
Doo-doo-dn-doo-doo ♪

♪ I'm right where I want to be ♪

♪ Doo-doo, doo-dn-doo-doo
Doo-doo-dn-doo-doo ♪

♪ I'm right where I want to be ♪

♪ I can get everything everywhere ♪

♪ I can get everything everywhere ♪