Filmmaker Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years traveling to 60 countries to interview roughly 2,000 people about what it means to be alive, and this film assembles their answers into a single portrait. Subjects speak directly to camera, first names given, about love, work, poverty, war, and homophobia, with translators and journalists on Arthus-Bertrand's team helping draw out accounts that range from a few sentences to extended personal histories. The film cuts between these testimonies and footage from the countries where they were filmed, letting a garment worker's account of poverty sit next to someone describing falling in love, without ranking one experience above another. This version, the first of three volumes made for online viewing, concentrates on love, women, work, and poverty; a separate theatrical cut runs over three hours and a television edit trims it further. No single narrator frames the material: the interviewees carry the argument themselves, testimony by testimony, about what experiences cross every border in the sample.