Chronovisor turns a research rabbit hole into must-see cinema

All of this is shot on 16mm and looks as if it’s filmed exclusively by the warm light of a banker’s lamp, even when Béatrice is outside The Yale Club or New York Society Library. It’s an intoxicating atmosphere of words and hints, each connection leading to another obscure book or magazine—a hypertext game, where links send you careening from one passage to another, given the self-driven energy of cinema. So many films struggle to visually translate the act of writing; Chronovisor thrives when visually translating the act of thinking. It does this first in the realm of research, chopping out sentences and thoughts, and compiling them on screen into a collage of news reports, magazine articles, and phone calls. 

Then, after dabbling in the realm of suspenseful investigative journalism (or in the esoteric page-turning of a bloodless giallo), Chronovisor pauses, lingering on the back of Sellier’s head while Holst’s score swells. One simple, brilliant zoom becomes an epiphany, a crescendo standing in for synapses firing all at once. It’s classical and economical—as evocative as its extreme close-ups on words and eyes—which gives the small-scale effort the intimate sensation of a dweebier Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead sci-fi. You never quite know if Chronovisor is going to find its way towards its fantastical prize, or if Béatrice will just be consumed by the haze of cover-ups and conspiracies she starts wandering into. But the nagging doubt that maybe there is something to all this is expertly sustained by Walker and Auen, making each new revelation nearly as exciting as the breakthrough phone call in All The President’s Men.

Chronovisor is artier and headier than that thriller, and more repetitive as it immerses its audience not in the narrative but in the mental state of one who can’t seem to fully scratch an idea in the back of their mind. That devotion to single-minded infatuation—and an infatuation with knowledge rather than something more tangible—is skillfully embodied by Sellier and inherently a little alienating. But anyone who’s found themselves looking up from their book, phone, or computer monitor to find that long hours have passed and they’ve forgotten to eat anything, will see themselves in this movie, which is itself doing some of the chronovisor’s own mythical work. 

As we watch a life captured onto film, encased in physical time, it’s easy to realize the way that our writings and videos leave behind a multimedia shadow self; when Béatrice acquires a whole box filled with materials, it’s as if a new character has entered the frame for the first time. Chronovisor‘s ability to shift the way we look at research and at our relationship with media, from its slow-burn beginnings to its freakout finale, is almost as exciting as remembering that this is the first feature from a pair of new filmmakers. Boldly inviting its audience to weave between the lanes of lucidity and enthrallment, this film might entice some obsessives of its own.

Director: Kevin Walker, Jack Auen
Writer: Kevin Walker, Jack Auen
Starring: Anne Laure Sellier
Release Date: September 4, 2026