Hell is Other People
2015 · 21m · Australia
Directed by Jess Hutchison
Genres: documentary, satire
Tones: darkly comic, provocative
Melbourne commuters and a former tram conductor vent about the miseries of riding trams.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A Sartre reference weaponized against commuter culture—this takes the most boring possible subject (tram complaints) and mines it for genuine misanthropy without a single frame of irony hedging its bets. Other scouts would pass; that's exactly why it works.
The film's restraint is its architecture: a clean observational structure that recalls the essay-documentary tradition while the tonal control—never quite letting the satire tip into mockery—suggests a director conscious of how to position rage within form.
The crucial move is the former conductor's perspective breaking the commuter chorus; that single presence transforms what could be shallow venting into something with actual depth, letting us feel the exhaustion of someone on the other side of the complaint.
Reviews
This documentary is all too familiar for today's tram passenger – the packed carriages, the authoritarian inspectors, and the whiff of body odour from someone's armpit directly in your face as you struggle to hold on to something. It's a good watch if your commute home didn't enrage you enough.