“I don’t exist in this world. Maybe I’m calmer when I’m dead,” explains Javier, recalling what he felt during the period – more than two years – in which he lived on the streets. He does it in the documentary What no one wants to seecreated by the actor Richard Gere and his wife Alejandra, together with the non-profit organization Home yeswith whom they have been collaborating for ten years. At the premiere this Monday evening in Madrid, Javier explains that when he was asked to participate in the project (funded by the Ministry of Social Rights), he saw “an opportunity to be heard”. Pepe, another of the protagonists, says that the film symbolically and literally gave him his voice back because after so many days spent on the street without talking to anyone, it turned off and didn’t come out. In his case, he lost his job after the pandemic and spent six months sleeping on the streets.
It’s not that you’re invisible, it’s that people decide to look the other way, Gere tells them. When asked why it is important that a Hollywood star cannot set foot on any street in the world without someone noticing his presence and asking for a photo to be close to realities so different from his own, the actor denies the main question. “It’s not completely different. When I was doing the research to make the film (invisiblefrom 2014, where he plays a man who ends up sleeping on the street), I was in a homeless shelter in New York. I tried to go unnoticed. They (the homeless) had to arrive at seven because if they arrived later they would not be able to stay for the night. People started arriving and a man approached me. He looked at me and said, “Richard!” I thought, “Oh, I got caught.” Then he asked me, “You don’t remember me, do you?” I told him I was sorry, but no. «I’m John. We made a film together!’ My God, he was an actor. I asked him what happened to him and he said, “I ran out of money and now I’m in a shelter.” We can all end up like this. All. Due to a health, mental, financial or work-related problem. I don’t see these differences. We are all brothers and sisters here.” Alejandra Gere adds that during the filming of the film in which her husband played a beggar, no one stopped him on the street.
Mamen tells the documentary’s premiere, on stage at the capital’s Callao cinema, that “from the age of 12” her mother threw her “out into the street”, where she slept for more than two decades. “I saw how they set fire to a boy who was sleeping at the bus station. They poured bleach and glass on me, they treated me like I was garbage… I thought that any day now I would wake up dead everywhere.” Now she pinches herself every time she sees the key to the house where she lives in her pocket thanks to Hogar Sí, who has taken care of more than 10,000 people like her since 1998 and who reminds us that there are currently more than 37,000 homeless people in Spain.
Gere gives EL PAÍS six minutes in a series of interviews to promote it What no one wants to see and today he doesn’t want to talk about many of the issues that worry him. When asked if he believes that the mandate of Donald Trump – who was in the Nobel Peace Prize pool – will mean a new “witch hunt” in the US after the actress Susan Sarandon, with a profile as busy as hers, reported being on a blacklist because she criticized Benjamin Netanyahu’s massacre in Gaza, he replies that he prefers to talk about the documentary. But then he adds: “Everything is connected: Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine… Either we see each other as brothers, or we don’t. Either we think that others are not important, that they are dangerous and must be eliminated, or we adopt an inclusive point of view and see that we are social beings with histories that interact with each other. I am one of those, I think we are all in the same situation. And when you see things from that point of view, of course you have to talk constantly and consistently.”
– And is it more dangerous to speak now than before?
– In some countries yes. In the United States, people are being dragged off the streets.
Gere doesn’t even want to valorize today Tesla’s recent decision to pay a trillion dollars – half of the wealth generated by Spain (GDP) for a year – to a single man, Elon Musk, but when pressed on the example of inequality he represents, he adds: “It’s not about inequality. It’s about commitment and the ability to look beyond ourselves. Even if we are incapable, because we are selfish, of seeing the problems of others, we are actually making things worse for ourselves, creating problems in every corner of the world. “There is enough food for everyone; enough housing and enough health services… this can be achieved. And, of course, if everyone met these needs, we would all be safer and happier.”
Mamen explains from the stage of a cinema, in front of the giant screen on which she has just told her story, that she is happy. No need to say because it’s obvious, he smiles all the time and even jokes with his guardian angel: “Good health, Richard Gere, you’re already a few years old, handsome.” At his side, Latyr, who spent more than 24 months on the streets after losing everything in a scam, says the Hogar project saved his life. He was diagnosed with lung cancer, but doctors told him he would not survive the treatment he needed if he continued to sleep on the sidewalks. Now he has a home, health and a girlfriend who he proudly greets in the spotlight before receiving emotional applause. Pepe explains that, in addition to providing him with a house, the non-profit organization helped him arrange his pension documents and that, since he now has “nothing to do”, he goes around. Most of the time he finds himself faced with homeless people living near his home. “Now help.” Bring them coffee, give them a cigarette and talk to them so they don’t lose their voice.
