Because the series takes place in so many different locations in eight different countries around the world, by the end of the shooting, the cast and crew had completed 100,000 miles of flight time, the equivalent of going around the globe four times.
Instead of hiring directors to film individual episodes, the producers hired directors to film the individual locations. The Wachowskis directed all scenes set in Chicago, San Francisco, London, and Iceland; James McTeigue directed all scenes set in Mexico City and Mumbai; Dan Glass directed all scenes set in Seoul; and Tom Tykwer, who had co-directed Cloud Atlas (2012) with The Wachowskis, directed all scenes set in Berlin and Nairobi.
Because the series' directors are assigned a specific location rather than individual episodes, each installment has multiple directors. Individual directing credits are spread out randomly throughout the series, and given based on how many episodes' worth of running time each director was responsible for.
Shot in 9 different cities around the world.