An uncommon story told on common ground by ten Londoners. All have lives shaped by loss and love, trauma and bravery, struggle and resistance. They grapple with a system stacked against them. They dance, steal, and eat together; agree and disagree, celebrate their differences and share their talents. The lines between one person’s story and another’s performance are blurred and the borders between reality and fiction are porous. Eventually coming together on a makeshift stage, Here for Life marks the culmination of a long collaboration between filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman and theatre-maker Adrian Jackson, a group of Londoners, and a dog.

Produced by Artangel

Presented in partnership with Another Gaze

Followed by a Q&A with director Andrea Luka Zimmerman, hosted by Daniella Shreir, Founder-Editor of Another Gaze.

Read an essay on Here For Life by Laura Staab

Andrea Luka Zimmerman is an artist, filmmaker and cultural activist. Andrea’s work is concerned with marginalisation, social justice and structural violence and has been nominated for The Grierson Award and The Film London Jarman Award. Her films include Erase and Forget (2017), which had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival and Estate, a Reverie (2015) which documents the last days of Hackney’s Haggerston Estate before its demolition, the artist’s home for 17 years.

Adrian Jackson is a theatre maker, playwright, teacher, translator and one of the world’s leading experts on the Theatre of the Oppressed. In 1991, he founded Cardboard Citizens, a theatre project that aims to change the lives of homeless people through the performing arts. He has directed over 50 plays with Cardboard Citizens, including Pericles (2003) and Timon (2006) with the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Beggar’s Opera (1999) with the English National Opera, Mincemeat (2009), winner of an Evening Standard Theatre Award and A Few Man Fridays (2012).