After Work

In 1958, the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote the following lines in her book The Human Condition: "What we are confronted with is the prospect of a society of labourers without labour, that is, without the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse." After Work is a timely, highly necessary, contemporary update on Arendt’s warning about the world of work today, its possible future and its possible disappearance. How are we to give meaning to our lives if we are to become deprived of what for so long has been its main content - that is to say, work? Focusing on relatively well-to-do economies such as Italy, the United States, South Korea and Kuwait, the film functions like a taster of a conundrum that risks becoming more widespread over time with the rise of artificial intelligence and automation. Interviewing a wide range of figures (among them, an Amazon delivery driver; a philosopher specialised in the origins and history of the work ethic; and an heiress), After Work attempts a thought experiment: to separate work from employment, or even productivity, and to envisage it as an activity for its own sake, that might cater only to the people who engage in it.

Dimitri de Preux