Time is one of the most fascinating things to think about. Of course, it’s not a thing at all—we call it a dimension. Are there any better Wikipedia entries than those for “time” and “circadian rhythm”?

Director Philipp Hartmann puts his chronophobia to fascinating and occasionally funny use in this very German essay motivated by a very common anxiety: fear of the passing of time. His continent-hopping journey is poetic and evocative by turns. We move from the atomic clock in Braunschweig (which “exports time” to other European countries) to the amazing planes of the largest salt desert in the world, lying at 4000m in Bolivia. Hartmann is interested in unusual experiences of time—including a fascinating section regarding a test for Alzheimer’s—but mostly this is a film about the quotidian, about how the mind registers and is unsettled by being in it, with, of course, a few surprises along the way.

“A filmic philosophical essay often poses a challenge: how to film an idea? Often, talking about a particular matter is confused with materializing it in front of the camera. That’s why Philipp Hartman uses no intellectual stars to explain the philosophical dimension of time and rather attempts to present some sort of phenomenology of time through his camera and his own immediate experience.“ (Roger Koza, FICUNAM)

(Vancouver International Filmfestival 2013)