From One Second to the Next
2013 · 35m · United States
Directed by Werner Herzog
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
Legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog chronicles the devastating human cost of texting while driving, weaving together the firsthand testimony of the perpetrators and the surviving victims of four serious traffic accidents. Commissioned by AT&T for the "It Can Wait" public-awareness campaign, the film transcends its PSA origins into a meditation on guilt, loss, and irreversible moments.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Herzog taking an AT&T commission and weaponizing it into something genuinely unsettling—guilt so palpable it makes the corporate origins feel like a sick joke—is exactly the kind of subversive move that makes you question who actually won that deal.
A masterwork of restraint and moral weight: Herzog's formal rigor—the measured pacing, the refusal to sensationalize, the way testimony becomes almost liturgical—situates this squarely in the tradition of grave documentary meditation, proving the form still has teeth.
The decision to let survivors and perpetrators speak without directorial apparatus, just Herzog's presence as witness, creates an almost unbearable intimacy that transforms a safety PSA into something that feels earned rather than imposed.
Reviews
Werner Herzog's texting-while-driving documentary 'From One Second to the Next' is worth watching.
Herzog plumbs the guilt and loss wrought by texting and driving.