Give Us the Money

Bosse Lindquist (2012)

Can glitz and celebrity save the world? Thirty years ago, rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono set out on a journey to fight poverty in Africa. They tried to convince some of the wiliest and mightiest politicians on earth to change the world. Give us the Money tracks their journey through famines and palaces, and world-wide TV-audiences. But how successful have they really been? Did they manage to make the world a better place?

Bosse Lindquist’s film tracks the history of this idea. “A band of musicians set out to change the world” he says “and now the time has come to ask: What did they achieve, and is celebrity politics is the right way of combatting world poverty?”’

Give Us the Money is part of the crossmedia project Why Poverty? The film premiered at IDFA in 2012 and was screened on over 70 TV channels worldwide at the end of November. Was awarded the 72:nd Peabody Award.