Away
2007 · 3m · Canada
Directed by Peter Mettler
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative
Scenes shot on a cellphone in Costa Rica prompt a traveller to reflect on the tension between the natural world and digital technology.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Mettler's using a cellphone to document Costa Rica—which sounds like Instagram tourism until you realize he's turned the medium's limitation into the whole point, making the constraint do the thinking instead of just fetishizing it.
A precise sit-down with the essay film tradition, where the tension between observation and reflection becomes formal: the cellphone footage isn't naive—it's a deliberate aesthetic choice that echoes structural documentary lineage while interrogating how we frame 'nature' through technology.
The decision to shoot on cellphone rather than *about* cellphone documentation is what makes this work—it's not a commentary on digital mediation, it's an acceptance of it, and that restraint choice reframes the entire meditation.