16/07/2025 - Screening at Fest Anča, Nata Metlukh’s short summons us to kill time before it kills us first, while exploring why we feel the need to talk about productivity

Your alarm is ringing. Notifications on your phone beg for your urgent attention. You look away for a second, and your breakfast is burnt to a crisp. The day is half-way over, and tasks keep piling on until you feel like you’re drowning. You think you’re playing tag with time itself, but it always seems to win, and you end up running in place in the ever-spinning wheel of life.

In her painfully relatable short Off-Time, which screened in the International Competition of Shorts at Fest Anča, California-based Ukrainian artist and director Nata Metlukh tells the story of a data engineer who finds the solution to his lack of productivity in multi-tasking. However, his hectic way of living collapses into chaos. The only way he can finally unwind and take a breath is to hop off the time-train and find peace in the same disarray that threatens to break his psyche.

Metlukh’s witty and unpretentious story may be a rather literal take on our efficiency-obsessed society, but it tackles a problem most people face today. The film’s humorous tone shows the director’s deep understanding of younger generations’ constant battle with the ticking clock and their search for work-life balance. There are some laugh-out-loud moments in which many of us would recognise personal experiences: annoyingly slow walkers that take up the entire pavement; the illusion that the other queues at the supermarket always move faster than ours; even bringing the laptop to the toilet to finish an urgent assignment.

We laugh, because we get it – but we also feel the character’s anxiety as he’s galloping through life and juggling with work, chores and errands. That effect is further accentuated by the dynamic camera movements and sharp angles that correspond perfectly to Metlukh’s distinctive art style. Rough wonky lines and brave brush strokes pulsate with bold colours on clear backgrounds for a full 11 minutes – quite long considering the film is self-produced and executed with a really small team. At times the action drags a bit, and if it were not for its main subject, the pacing would feel a bit off. However, the tempo helps elevate the message of the film to a new level.

Tending to our mental and physical health despite our overwhelming lifestyle is an important aspect of Fest Anča’s theme this year – Our Bodies – and taking a break to protect ourselves from exhaustion is an essential element of self-care. This idea is not only explored in Off-Time, which was part of the main competition, but it also appears in some of the films in the thematic programmes. A good example is Léa Buffard’s Snack Time, which follows a strawberry-headed protagonist so preoccupied she cannot even squeeze a little snack into her tight schedule. Every time she tries to, she is scolded by her pet flower – that probably represents her self-expectations – and eventually her life clashes into a complete burnout. Such topics are further examined in Total Refusal’s Hardly Working, in which non-playable characters from the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 are used to portray labour as a trap set by capitalism.

The common thread is obvious, and it is no surprise that filmmakers nowadays are interested in the theme of achievement. We see inaction as a source of guilt, and to relieve our conscience we feel the pressure to work extra hard. There is a voice at the back of our minds screaming: Keep up! If we don’t, we would fall behind, miss out, crash, burn and fail. Every little activity is expected to have a purpose, and motivational slogans all over social media guilt-trip us into finding less and less value in doing… nothing.

Yet creativity requires some time to “waste”. In Off-Time, the character keeps watering a plant that only grows after reality falls apart. It grows as he steps out of his routine, and he rediscovers the beauty of these little pieces of nothingness – taking a pause to wave at your neighbour, watching the sunset or blowing a dandelion.

In that sense, Metlukh’s film raises important questions about our relationship with work and rest, but it also sends out a powerful message to the audience: No rush. Everything will be alright.