06/10/2023 - Luca Quagliato and Laura Carrer’s documentary about riders working for food delivery platforms in Europe is a mini essay about new forms of economy, social interaction and (non-existent) inclusion

“No-one notices us. We’re invisible”. They fly past us on their bikes, they bring us food, and we can barely bring ourselves to thank them. They’re only mentioned in newspapers when they’re hit by a tram or when they sue the company they’re working for. But during the pandemic, these riders were universally recognised for the crucial role they played, for their role in society. “But what role, other than saving time for people who have money?” one disheartened rider asks when interviewed in Luca Quagliato and Laura Carrer’s documentary Life Is a Game, which is competing in Turin’s Job Film Days. In reality, being a delivery rider – a profession carried out worldwide, born with the third millennium, exploited by multinationals around the globe, and on which gig economy experts, sociologists and trade unionists have been expressing opinions for years – is far from being a game. Maybe it’s more akin to a video game, in light of its rules, as suggested by the directors who have included an animated short film created by Marco Meloni in their doc, revolving around a futuristic rider called Emma. The latter is slotted in around the film’s interviews, which focus on 13 riders from 3 continents who talk about the working conditions suffered by people employed by food delivery platforms.

It helps to name these riders in order to better understand the geography covered by the documentary: Italians Marco and Giuseppe are interviewed in Milan; French nationals Camille and Jean Bernard are interviewed in Brussels; Colombian Luisa is interviewed in Barcelona; Italian Nicolò in Berlin; Nigerian Samson in Seregno (Italy); Greeks Christos, Erini, Yorgos and Adonis are interviewed in Athens; Syrian Ahmed in Berlin; and Venezuelan Yolimar in Barcelona.

Shot exclusively at night-time, this movie by Quagliato (a filmmaker and photographer sensitive to environmental themes) and Carrer (a freelance journalist and expert on technology and surveillance) pays no heed to the locations in question, which appear interchangeable. Instead, it offers very close-up shots of the protagonists’ faces, charting their own individual toponomies. Their responses are mostly ordered by topic – the ambiguity (to use a euphemism) of apps and algorithms, the dangers they face on the road, the lack of social interaction, the question of rights and customer rudeness – and not all of the riders interviewed express the same opinions. There are those who are more enthusiastic about the job, perhaps because they come from a community of bikers whose romanticism was swiftly exploited by delivery platforms, or because it means not having to obey a boss in a factory. And there are those who denounce the exploitation involved: “they take advantage of the fact that we’re immigrants and that we’re not familiar with German laws; they fire us and don’t pay us regularly”. Then there are those who protect themselves from feeling alienated by behaving “like robots, with no emotion”. These Cahiers de doléances reveal moments of pride, and great bitterness and suspicion. The infamous algorithms used by platforms effectively take control of them, spy on them, select them, direct them, discriminate against them according to whether they’re black, white or Arab, women or men, or slower or faster, in a ruthless ranking which doesn’t make allowances for accidents on rain-soaked tarmac or having your bike stolen in a “tricky” neighbourhood. Algorithms which harvest precious data about customers through these riders and their deliveries, brutally profiling the former: hence the phenomenon of dark kitchens, which sees companies using restaurants whilst simultaneously becoming their competitors in totally treacherous fashion.

But the depressing chapter on where society is headed ultimately opens and closes on the theme of customers, with all of us locked up in our homes communicating (ordering food) via apps. “Rude, racist, sexist”. “And they open the door in their pants, can you believe it?”. In short, Life Is a Game is a socio-ethnographic essay about new forms of economy, social interaction, (non-existent) inclusion and language, which should be watched by all those writing laws in Europe and those opposing the power of multinationals, often armed only with blunt instruments.

Life Is a Game is produced by Irpi Media with the support of the European Cultural Foundation, in co-production with Enece Film, Hermes Center and Nepente Film.

(Translated from Italian)