Cities are living organisms, and we are the energy keeping them alive and growing. The relationship is interdependent, neither can exist as we know it without the other; people shape environments and environments shape people.

In our new City Charged film project, Highsnobiety and Nike Sportswear challenged five groups of people to capture the energy animating their city and to give an insight into their unique worlds. The result is five experimental portraits of fast-paced global cities — London, Paris, LA, Berlin and New York.

Taking a behind the scenes look at all five films it’s evident that despite setting out to capture individual locations defined by those who live there, we found places defined by global connectivity. In an increasingly connected world, we’re steadily becoming global citizens, sharing ideas, inspiring actions and shaping the world faster than ever before.

In Europe we discovered an international creativity network helping a London-based South African travel the world modeling, an underground Berlin music collective perform for fans in Shanghai and two Parisians juggle filmmaking, acting and sporting careers. Spreading across the Atlantic, the interconnected global landscape helped elevate a young LA talent towards working with superstar musician Drake and inspired two New Yorkers to turn their creative muses into a business. Each city burns with a passion that warms and illuminates the others, and City Charged captured the individual sparks lighting the fires.

Check out the behind the scenes footage above and all five short films below before copping the new Nike LunarCharge via Nike.com.