Day After Day
1962 · 27m · Canada
Directed by Clément Perron
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Life in a Quebec paper-mill town of 6,500 people revolves around the mill's routine, shaping every hour of work and home life in 1962.
Picked by Margot
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A 27-minute essay on industrial routine could be a snoozefest, but Perron's refusal to sentimentalize or dramatize the mill town—just letting the rhythm *be*—is a quiet middle finger to documentary's usual tear-jerking moves.
Perron's observational precision and structural clarity place this squarely in the NFB's documentary lineage; the film's formal restraint—letting quotidian repetition speak rather than narrate—demonstrates a rigor that influenced a generation of essayistic cinema.
The genius move is treating the mill's whistle and clock chimes as the actual protagonist; every cut syncs to the town's imposed temporality, and that single formal decision—letting sound design carry the existential weight—transforms what could be dull sociological footage into something genuinely haunting.