Former US President Barack Obama will stage himself as an explorer of the American working world and will be the narrator of the documentary series Working: What We Do All Day, presented in France under the title Working: Passer sa vie à la gagner, available on Netflix from May 17, the platform announced. This series directed by Caroline Suh, whose trailer was released on Thursday April 27, was produced by Concordia Studio and Higher Ground Productions, the company founded by the Obama couple in 2018.
“In this series, I talk to American workers in various sectors, from hospitality to technology or home care, to understand their work and their hopes for the future,” Barack Obama explained on Twitter. It is part of an approach inspired by the book Working by Studs Terkel, a great figure of the American left who died in 2008. Through the episodes, the former president uses his talents as a narrator to explore " ways of finding meaning at work ” and to “create a bond through experiences and difficulties”, specifies Netflix on its site.
Barack Obama had won the Emmy Award for best narrator for the documentary series Our Great National Parks (6 x 52') broadcast on Netflix (Satellifacts, September 4, 2022). American Factory, the first documentary produced by Higher Ground Productions, also won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and an Emmy for Directing.