Our new bi-weekly series “Freedom from Fear”, directed by Florian Giefer and Peter Göltenboth (pet&flo directors), premieres on March 4 on YouTube and in Berlin right outside the Gorki Theatre’s STUDIO Я: In his 1941 State of the Union address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed four goals for “people everywhere in the world”: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. 

These Four Freedoms became part of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Roosevelt equated “Freedom from Fear” mainly with overcoming war and violence. Today, the global consequences of the pandemic, climate change and of rapid digital evolution and the resulting social change have triggered various fears all over the world.

As social seismographs, the protagonists of the “Freedom from Fear” video series Felicitas Hoppe, Sasha Waltz, Peter Sellars, Sam Durant, Rainer Forst, Martha Nussbaum and James Conlon, just to name a few, will reflect on the significance of the right to live without fear in search of answers: How can literature, dance, music, philosophy and politics address social fears?