Zeitprobleme: Wie der Arbeiter wohnt is one of the early works of „proletarian film reportage“. Slatan Dudow, also known for his later film Kuhl Wampe or Wem gehört die Welt? (1932), not only wanted to show the degrading living conditions in Berlin’s tenements and slums, but also edited in some images of exclusive residential areas. While a overweight  bourgeois is washing his  dog, an exhausted worker is reading his action for ejectment. The film changes between detailed realism in showing the poor flats and a nearly avant-garde camera  with a view of light and shadow in the backyards, which recall the drawings of Heinrich Zille.