The essay film is almost a lost art. The hybrid blend of documentary and experimental fiction is rare to see. For a personal essay film to work, the director must feel confident, vulnerable, and with just the right amount of self-aggrandising – think Chantal Akerman or Jonas Mekas. It’s refreshing to see a committed direction towards this divisively personal framework following Paula Ďurinová’s debut Lapilli, which premiered last year in Karlovy Vary. The somber family portrait paired against stark Slovak geological wonders earned a lot of buzz. Taking a more stripped-back urban approach this time, Action Item should’ve been in a prime position to confront Western productivity culture head-on.

The film starts with a long shot of a woman riding on her bike as our narrator talks about how a sprained ankle was the catalyst for a moment of introspection. The realisation that she ignored the physical pain, unaware of its severity, instead worrying about her entry into the job market, shocked her. This is what prompts the rest of Ďurinová’s revelations and interactions with others and their own experiences of exhaustion. The film’s presentation of these insights is diaristic, and intended to feel organic. The director’s ability to communicate a exposed honesty is vital to films in this vein.

Unfortunately, Ďurinová and her narration feel unintentionally distant. The writing comes across as overly performed, at times melodramatic, and worst of all, dishonest. The narrator keeps attempting to convince the audience that these stories or anecdotes are urgent or intimate, but they are obscured with clichés and non-descript language. This 69-minute feature barely introduces, and much less dissects the central topics of burnout and Generation Z. Our narrator works in unsatisfying generalisations, speaking agreeably about the effects of work on our own self-perception but never challenging audiences to think beyond the basic. The choice to fluctuate from narration to undefined interviews further distances the viewer from any perspective and structurally limits any of these detached voices from defining themselves or introducing nuance.

Ďurinová’s ambition to be behind writing, editing, cinematography, and sound design is double-edged. It’s clear to see her attention was stretched thin; sound design comes across as more of an afterthought than anything. The embellishments are clumsily homemade and distracting. One of the biggest flaws with Ďurinová’s undertaking is her incorporation of urban spaces and Berlin as a central figure in her internal discussions. Ideally, this would emulate the way Akerman utilises New York’s infrastructure as a character in News From Home (1977) or, more recently, commercialised Recife in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures of Ghosts (2023).

Here the German capital feels strangely distant. We get hints of Berlin iconography, but the camera isn’t patient enough for the city panorama to feel intertwined with the narration without explicitly explaining each metaphor and decision. When Ďurinová chooses to stay with an idea, the image choices are obvious over-didactic. Ranging from static scenes of corporate windows or close-up footage juxtaposing commonplace items against a vast empty sky, the creations are heavy-handed. There’s a lack of consistent curiosity to how the physical features of Berlin and the metropolitan space reflect the emotions being communicated.

There are redeeming factors to Ďurinová’s directorial voice. Ďurinová has already proven with Lapilli that she is more than capable of evocative abstractions. Visually, Action Item continues to show Ďurinová’s strength for avant-garde cinematography. Although partly a misfire, the confidence needed to embark on this adventure is commendable, and occasionally, one can see the potential to revisit similar thematic ground. The visa interviews, the dreadful wait, the crisis fatigue, the guilt from missing protests are genuinely moving.

Durinova’s political voice is occasionally sharp in Action Item and although restricted by short segments, there is promise for her poignant self-criticism and concrete resistance to bureaucracy to be more effective in future efforts.

Action Item shows in the 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival