Whether searching for solitude, a sense of freedom or of belonging, the protagonists of Above and Below show us that home can be created in the most bizarre of places. Alternating between an observational style and a more interventionist stance, film-maker Nicolas Steiner enters the lives of a number of different people who live their lives on their own terms, trying to find peace with their choices. In their previous lives, each of them has seen some painful rejection by the world: therefore, now, Rick and Cindy, a homeless couple, live in the gutter in the city of Las Vegas; David lives alone in a shelter in the Californian desert; April, a former soldier in the Irak war, simulates a Mars mission, in full astronaut gear, on the rocky terrain of Utah. The dystopian feel of the story is just a camouflage for the profound humanity of these people who inhabit places that look unfamiliar, don’t fit into the modern world as we know it and yet, in the end, emerge as being rather similar to ourselves. Funny, moving and shot in beautiful widescreen, this is a dazzling portrait of existence on the fringes of American society, which makes you want to review your own personal history of triumphs and defeats.