Life in a Day

A documentary that tells a single day through footage shot all over the world. The idea: on 24 July 2010 people were asked to film what they did that day and send it in. The volume that came back was enormous; thousands of hours arrived from close to two hundred countries. The editing team spread the material across one day: waking, breakfasts, journeys to work, evening meals, night. Footage from different countries is placed side by side within the same hour, and both the difference and the resemblance come from that. Everyone was also asked the same questions: what do you love, what do you fear, what is in your pocket. The answers carry the film's spine. There are births in it and deaths; an ordinary family meal can sit beside a serious accident. The film does not interpret them. Kevin Macdonald oversaw the edit; Ridley Scott is among the producers. It was made with the participation of a video platform of the time and published there directly. An interesting experiment for anyone who likes documentary and the idea of a collective project. For a viewer expecting a narrative, the film tells no story; the structure is entirely compilation and some passages stay without context.