Erik Gandini’s ‘After Work,’ Doc Exploring Our Relationship With Work, Boarded by CAT&Docs (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Lise Pedersen Paris-based CAT&Docs has come onboard as sales agent for Italian-Swedish director Erik Gandini’s “After Work,” which had its world premiere in the main competition at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen Intl.

Documentary Film Festival. Variety speaks to the director at the festival. In this stunningly cinematic doc, lensed by Ruben Östlund’s long-time DOP Fredrik Wenzel and shot in the U.S., Italy, South Korea and Kuwait, Gandini explores the notion of work in the 21st century, as automation and technology free up time, and asks what the future could be like in a work-free society.

One of the inspirations for the film, Gandini says, was Swedish sociologist Roland Paulsen’s writings on the ideology of work, which is rooted in the notion of a work ethic developed some 350 years ago. “It was very relevant at the beginning of the industrial revolution because we needed to build so much.

Everybody needed to work, it became the perfect idea for the time, and it also became a religious idea. But this is not compatible with the present, and definitely not with the future if technology is about to help us save so much time.” According to a Gallup survey mentioned in the film, 85% of people worldwide are not engaged in their work – Gallup defines employee engagement as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.