Life Underground

Hervé Cohen

Life Underground is a series of short programmes, each 2 minutes in duration, that takes viewers on a journey into the world’s underground railways through chance meetings with passengers who share their personal stories with us: a dream, an experience, a touching incident, a profound thought.

Each story is recorded in audio only, to be used as voice-over in sequences showing the passengers filmed in the style of a tableau vivant as they sit motionless in a moving carriage or march in pace with crowds of commuters in the subway corridors, their words emerging like an inner voice.

From Santiago to New Delhi, Madrid to Moscow, and Tokyo to San Francisco, Life Underground offers a poetic cinematic journey underground in around twenty metropolises around the world that allows us to tap into our shared humanity, and also to celebrate our cultural differences.