Slovak photographer and cinematographer Martin Kollár, who lensed Velvet Terrorists [+lee también:
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Kollár records the mundane with a photographic sensibility and a touch of Glawogger-like irony. A line of ambulances stands motionless in a hangar as men in hazmat suits rehearse containment procedures for a virus yet to arrive. A priest blesses a newly built highway. A man carves a monumental Christ out of ice. Moments from the pandemic, African swine fever culls, political ceremonies, environmental clean-ups and small-town bureaucratic rituals congeal into what the director calls “a future archive”.

Rejecting the conventions of journalistic reportage, Kollár adopts the methods of visual anthropology. His film unfolds through a sequence of self-contained moments without any commentary or explanatory voiceover. By eschewing dramatisation, Chronicle avoids both the sensationalism of news media and the sentimentality of nostalgia, registering instead the coexistence of the absurd and the ordinary in a society in flux.

Although the most recognisable images stem from the pandemic era, Chronicle encompasses a much wider range of scenes, from the demolition of buildings to a bus stranded in the snow. The film’s structure is closer to a visual project than a traditional documentary, shaped through precise compositions that shift from tight framings to wide shots of collective activity, firefighters in training and local officials at a meeting. Through patient observation, Kollár extracts the surreal and the uncanny from the banal, framing them with deliberate restraint.

By isolating particular moments from their immediate political or social context, the director underscores his focus on the image itself. The observational essay gradually transforms into a meditative study. The film alternates between figurative and non-figurative imagery, combining recognisable situations as well as decontextualised fragments, from still lifes in nature to images of civilians or other groups of people.

The result is a sequence of static compositions, occasionally interrupted by slow pans, unfolding with a measured rhythm that invites contemplation of the strangeness embedded in the everyday. Kollár’s images remain devoid of pathos or sentimentality. Scenes depicting dead animals or polluted landscapes are not presented as morbid tableaux, but rather as further elements in the continuum of existence.

In contrast with his debut feature, Chronicle thus marks a shift in Kollár’s mode of documentary filmmaking from intimate, personal study to socio-anthropologic collage.

Chronicle was produced by Punkchart Films (Slovakia), and co-produced by Somatic Films (Czech Republic) and Slovak Television and Radio. Film Expanded handles the theatrical release in Slovakia, and Pilot Film will premiere the film theatrically in the Czech Republic in February 2026.