Pandemic, protests and pet spiders: 'Life in a Day 2020' hits Sundance

When Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald created documentary "Life in a Day" a decade ago, their goal was to construct a video portrait of a typical 24 hours on Earth, as filmed by tens of thousands of amateurs around the world.

Repeating the trick in "Life in a Day 2020," stitching together footage shot last summer as the coronavirus pandemic and massive anti-racism protests turned the world on its head, their sequel is anything but typical.

Assembled by a vast team of editors from 324,000 submitted clips, the film - which premieres on Feb. 1 at the Sundance Film Festival before hitting YouTube - captures the eerily empty streets, collective cabin-fever and civil unrest of a year like no other.

"Obviously because of everything that was going on at that moment in July - George Floyd, BLM, Trump, COVID - this is a more thematically rich film, and probably a year, than hopefully, we'll get for a while," director Macdonald told AFP.

The footage is more personal than political. Macdonald's favorite clip is a Robinson Crusoe-esque man who recorded himself chatting to pet spiders Sammy, Jacob and Crystal during lockdown, and "feels like he's the last man on Earth."

We meet a man left homeless by the pandemic who finds relief in flying drones, and a mother whose young son appeared in the first film but who now keeps his ashes in an urn after his tragic death from COVID-19.

Macdonald - Oscar-winning director of "The Last King of Scotland" and "Touching the Void" - agreed to return for a sequel last March, when the looming pandemic was "this COVID thing" which seemed sure to "be over by May." (Scott returns as executive producer.)

"Little did we know the whole year would be utterly transformed," Macdonald said.

"Even...