Future-facing documentary
Imagine a world in which you receive a monthly stipend with no strings attached. How might your life change?
While universal basic income – a regular, unconditional cash stipend provided to every citizen – has caught on around the world as the next “big idea,” its antecedents and implications have yet to be explored. Earn a Living, a 7-part interactive documentary series aims to do just this, using basic income as a lens through which to interrogate our relationship to work and money in the 21st century.
Welcome to the 21st century.
Time to get to work!
Via an interactive and personalized dialogue with a no-bullsh*t narrator, the series pushes viewers to engage with their own socio-economic prejudices and misconceptions. As the viewer answers pointed questions – Can people can be trusted with free money? Who should pay to support society’s most vulnerable members? – their answers determine the order in which they view the series episodes.
So, what do you suppose a future
in which basic income exists would look like?
The Series
With new studies suggesting that up to 50% of jobs in the United States alone are at risk of automation in the next two decades, and basic income experiments popping up around the world – from India to Kenya, the US, France and all points in between – Earn a Living jumps headfirst into what the future may hold.
In character-driven episodes around the world, the series looks to upend viewers’ assumptions about the way the world works. By mixing documentary and animation, the series helps to make big concepts feel both personal and understandable. What’s more, by engaging with local directors and production crews in each new country, each episode’s documentary story is given an insider’s perspective that allows for nuanced and authentic portraits to emerge.
Earn a Living is a Upian, Arte (France), VPRO (Netherlands), BR (Germany) and Hamsa Films (US) co-production with support from the CNC, Creative MEDIA Europe, Tribeca Film Institute and the Paris City Hall.
The narrator: Playful, cheeky and sarcastic
Our narrator is the central character of Earn a living, guiding the viewer through the whole experience. His voice conveys the impertinent, playful and sarcastic tone of the series, which aims to put a refreshing spin on the heady topics it tackles.
The narrator’s voiceover accompanies the viewer throughout the whole experience, addressing the viewer directly leading up to, and during, the episodes. In his balance between intellectualism and sometimes crass colloquialism, the narrator sounds a bit like Werner Herzog playing a game of Cards Against Humanity; he plays with the viewers’ biases and speaks directly to them, challenging their preconceived ideas or cheekily poking fun at them.
Economics is heavy stuff
but (thank God!)
I’m a professional narrator,
not an economist.
But the narrator also pushes viewers to widen their perspective, making an often dry topic feel personal and pressing. In the final, augmented reality episode, the narrator goes from being a disembodied voice to an AI companion that walks viewers through a vision of the future of work. In the end, the series takes the good with the bad and lets viewers make up their own minds about whether the world that’s just around the corner will be utopian, dystopian, or somewhere in between. Whatever the case may be, our narrator will be there to check the viewer’s pulse and encourage them to breathe deep.
Episodes: A unique user journey* through the 7 episodes of the series
* Episode order is dependent upon the answers viewers give in their interactive dialogue with the series’ narrator.
The Good Life – Cherokee, North Carolina, USA
Since 1997, every member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has received an equal share of the revenues from the tribe’s casino in the form of two checks a year. What might the last 21 years of the tribe’s “per cap” program tell us about the long-term effects of a basic income?
Written by Yuval Orr and Malika Zouhali-Worrall
Directed by Malika Zouhali-Worrall
Life is Work – Tokyo, Japan
What happens when work goes from being the most important part of our lives, to the reason we’re no longer living?
When Kona Shiomachi anonymously published her manga You Should Quit Your Job Before You Die on Twitter it quickly went viral in Japan. What if, far from being an anomaly, the Japanese phenomenon of karoshi, or death by overwork, is a sign that we all need to rethink our work-life balance?
Written & Directed by
Yuval Orr and Hyoe Yamamoto
Money is Power – Siaya County, Kenya
Basic income is the next great hope for eradicating poverty, but who’s supposed to pay for it?
A small village in Western Kenya is home to a radical experiment – every month for the next 10 years every resident will receive a $22 cash transfer courtesy of Silicon Valley-backed NGO GiveDirectly. What happens when you give someone more money than they’ve ever had in their lives, no strings attached and no questions asked?
Written by Yuval Orr, Pete Murimi and Toni Kamau
Directed by Yuval Orr and Pete Murimi
Utopia in Reality – Kibbutz Samar, Israel
Even where money grows on trees, sharing resources with your neighbors isn’t always easy.
On a small farming community in Israel’s Arava desert, residents’ basic needs are covered regardless of whether or not they work. But after 42 years of existence, the community’s founding principle of “absolute independence and absolute personal responsibility” is being pushed to its limits. Can a basic income work even when we don’t completely trust our neighbors?
Written & Directed by Yuval Orr
The Stateless Society – Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Is the government a necessary component of a basic income future?
On the banks of a quiet canal in Amsterdam, Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof lays the foundations of a new nation – Bitnation. The founder of this so-called “virtual state,” Tarkowski Tempelhof and her merry band of libertarian programmers hope to make governments “redundant” and gamify social welfare. Is their vision a utopia in-the-making, or a nightmare?
Written & Directed by Yuval Orr
The Social Contract – Bordeaux, France
If the government can’t afford to give a basic income to everyone, then who should get what?
In France, 19 regional governments have banded together in order to launch an ambitious basic income experiment. Can basic income reverse the trends of poverty in the country, especially among the youth? And what will those who receive the money be expected to give back in return?
Written by Yuval Orr and Auriane Meilhon
Directed by Yuval Orr
Hand-in-Hand – Augmented Reality
In a world without work, will we feel freed or trapped by the robots that replace us?
In a docu-fiction experience in augmented reality, the user finds himself in a future where humankind has moved from full employment to full automation. Newly unemployed, the user is enrolled in the Hand-in-Hand government program, where he teaches artificial intelligence (AI) bots how to be better at identifying human emotions. The better the bots become, the more humans are freed from the messy task of “work” and the more basic income is available to everyone. Is a fully automated world one where we end up missing our day jobs?
Written by Yuval Orr
Created by Mike Robbins
Six character-driven documentary episodes that highlight alternative economic models and ways in which people work to earn a living, alongside one augmented reality experience imagining the future of work.
Like the shape of things to come?
… or terrified by it?
Selected Press & Festivals
Earn a living world premiered at IDFA DocLab (November 2018) as part of a live showcase of projects entitled “Assorted Revolutions.” The series was nominated for the IDFA DocLab Award for Best Digital Storytelling.
The series has since been featured at Italy’s Wake Up Europe! Festival, held in Turin (March 2019) in advance of the European Parliamentary elections and will be presented at DocAviv (May 2019), UpConference Paris (June 2019) and BANFF World Media Festival (June 2019) where it is nominated for Best Interactive Content.
Usbek & Rica – Gagner sa vie: plongée dans le revenu de base à visage humain
La Croix – Gagner sa vie: un web documentaire interactif sur le revenu universel
Libération – Si vous n’étiez pas obligé d’aller travailler, vous iriez quand même?
Alternatives Economiques – Ne plus perdre sa vie à la gagner
T3N – Grundeinkommen: Interaktive Webserie konfrontiert mit wichtigen Fragen