Our society is a work society. From childhood we are taught to be result oriented and competitive. As automation and artificial intelligence exceed human capacity, we will be forced to rethink the role work plays in our lives: the majority of jobs that exist today could vanish in a few decades. Debates about the consequences of this have been dominated by technology experts and economists and often painted as a sci-fi dystopia.

With characters and narratives across four continents, the film seeks an existential answer to what work means today, what things could be like in the future and what will happen to us when we don’t work. Will we even be able to do that?

In the film we learn about the USA, the “no vacation nation”, about work-ridden South Koreans with authorities that dictate that computers be shut down at 6:00, about Kuwaiti offices in which workers only imitate work, and about the wealthy descendants of Italian industrial magnates, who, for several generations now, do not have to earn a living. Will their experience and advice be useful to the future unemployed?