Trailer – All the Time in the World from Suzanne Crocker on Vimeo.
All The Time In The World is a charming documentary which follows a Canadian family of five over 9 months in the Yukon wilderness.
Directed by the family’s mother, Suzanne Crocker, and featuring three children aged 10, 8 and 4 (at the time), the film is an engaging story of the challenges and joys and a life without media, or much in the way of contemporary technology. The life is not sentimentalised, nor is there any fake drama for the sake of “narrative” as seen in so many documentaries.
Apart from its unusual setting, the film is also an unaffected portrait of ordinary family life – again without sentimentality or fake drama. There is much to reflect on about time, busy-ness and our connection with nature – but more importantly, this story engaged my own troupe of similarly aged children.
Often I find documentaries off-putting when they have all too transparent slants towards a specific narrative or message. Obviously All the Time In the World has a narrative, and the film has a message – but both emerge from a simple story told affectingly and well.
Séamus Sweeney 