Our Mission

Watch! Discuss! Act!

“Be careful. When a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health.”

Albert Camus

“An informed citizenry is the basic requirement for our survival as free people”.

Thomas Jefferson

“Polycrisis” has become the defining word of our time.  All these crises are connected, all reinforce one another, and all challenge our ability to understand and, above all, to act.

Europe stands at the centre of this polycrisis. We Europeans need to think about the future of our democracies and what can be done to preserve them. We need to think about the military challenge posed by Russia and the challenge to the rule of law posed by both Russia and China. We need to think how we take responsibility for our security now that the US is unwilling to keep its historic contribution to stability in Europe. We need to think how to switch from techno-populism to a techno-realism that uses technology as a way to enhance human progress without jeopardising it. More than anything, to be able to do all the above,  we need to think about how we stop our planet going up in flames.

So many questions. So hard to find answers.

That is why our Wake Up Europe campaign is so important.

We want to help Europeans to understand what is going on, to abandon complacency and slumber and to think, to discuss and to act against the historic challenges and the dark forces which are bringing us back. Together.

In the vision of the founders of the Wake-Up Europe Project, Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist and globally renowned author, Annalisa Piras, award-winning filmmaker, journalist and campaigner, and their new partner John Hooper,  author and Italy correspondent of The Economist, high quality creative documentaries change perceptions, cultures, conversations and, potentially, the way we see the world.

Since 2013 the Wake Europe campaign, an educational, non-profit project, conceived by Piras and Emmott, has been holding hundreds of screenings with debates throughout Europe, in academic institutions ranging from Oxford, Cambridge, Eton, Edinburgh, Dublin, Universitè Catholique of Louvain, European University Institute, LUISS and Ca’ Foscari, to civic institutions such as city councils in Finland or the Italian Parliament.

As the polycrisis besieging us accelerate in intensity and speed, reactionary forces push the boundaries of the international rule of law. We encourage and support all citizens and civic institutions in organising their own free Wake Up Europe events to watch extraordinary documentaries and to engage in thought provoking debates to help us wake up to our common challenges.

We must  resist turning back the clock to the darkest moments of our history.

Europeans have been there and have done it before.

We will do it again.

Annalisa Piras

Director

The Wake Europe Project