This unassuming, zero-budgeted feature, made without recourse to emotive editing techniques or complicated special effects sequences, and totally without egotistical pretense, is possibly one of the finest films made in the past ten years – it certainly ranks alongside La commune (Paris, 1871) (200o; dir. Peter Watkins) and Five Dedicated to Ozu (2003; dir. Abbas Kiarostami) in terms of cinematic originality. At once intensely personal and beautifully rendered, Kris N’s film manages to capture insanely transcendental moments in the life of a no-hope slacker, perhaps revealing a debt to filmmakers like Yasujirō Ozu or Béla Tarr as much as the pop culture references it chews up and spits out. Like the equally plot-less and therefore magnificent Electroma (2006; dirs. Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo), this develops new processes for film-making and viewing, quite rightly suggesting that the old ones have little relevance to a generation who live hand-in-hand with modern communication technologies.

The slacker lifestyle has generated some of the most interesting films to emerge from the USA – witness the early work of Richard Linklater or Larry Clark – but All This Time surpasses those in that its mise-en-scène has more in common with the masters of cinema than it does with any fleeting (and self-important) American indie sensibilities. As Orson Welles once advised, “A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens”. In this respect, Kris N and his collaborators should be applauded for their brave and inspiring attempt at something more artistically worthwhile than gunfights, swordplay or giant robots.

All This Time is not at the IMDb