How does this hybrid documentary film find depth in the trivial?
Two Northeastern families spend eight years letting a married filmmaking couple turn grocery runs and driveways into semi-scripted scenes. The result is a hybrid documentary film that turns the ordinary into something quietly seismic, and it arrives at a moment when audiences are newly interested in time-lapse portraits of real life.
Family roots in short form
Joe Stankus began the project in 2016 with a single short, The Backseat, that placed his grandparents in their own car. The modest experiment revealed how family members could play heightened versions of themselves without breaking authenticity.
Stankus and his wife, cinematographer Ashley Connor, expanded the idea into six distinct chapters. Each pairing focused on a different household ritual, from planting a tree to commuting, and each chapter kept the same cast members across nearly a decade.
The directors never hid their process. Their off-camera prompts and laughter remain audible, turning every scene into a record of both family life and the act of filming it.
Shifting from comic premise to time study
Early episodes lean comic: a grandmother recounts losing money in Vegas while the couple stage-manage her delivery. The humor keeps participants relaxed and audiences off guard.
Over repeated viewings, the same locations age in small but unmistakable ways. A kitchen wall changes color; a child who once sat in a booster seat now drives the car. The accumulation registers as lived time rather than montage trickery.
By the final chapter the laughter has softened. What began as playful reenactments now functions as an archive of bodies and relationships that will not stay the same.
Two image textures tell two clocks
Digital footage captures the families in crisp, immediate detail. The images feel contemporary, almost disposable, matching the disposable errands being recorded.
Intercut 16mm Bolex rolls, shot by Connor, show the directors’ own milestones: a wedding, a Paris trip, the birth of their child. The grain and flicker give those interludes the texture of old home movies even though they are recent.
The contrast makes the hybrid documentary film feel like two parallel clocks running at once: one digital and relentless, the other photochemical and already nostalgic.
Blurring lines without breaking trust
Participants know they are performing. They receive loose scenarios, then improvise within them. The result sits between scripted fiction and pure observation, yet never feels staged for drama’s sake.
Because the families are in on the construction, ethical questions that usually shadow directed documentaries remain muted. Everyone appears to enjoy the game, and the game itself becomes part of the record.
The directors’ audible guidance further collapses the distance between crew and subject. Viewers watch a family being directed in real time, which keeps the artificiality transparent rather than hidden.
Placing the film in hybrid lineage
Unlike The Act of Killing or The Arbor, which use reenactment to confront trauma, It Goes That Quick applies similar techniques to the uneventful. The method stays the same; the temperature drops.
Comparisons to Boyhood surface because real time passes, yet here the span is compressed into seventy minutes and focused on adults rather than a single child. The effect is less epic, more domestic.
The film also echoes early actualities such as Nanook of the North, where staged moments were presented as lived reality. Stankus and Connor simply make the staging visible instead of disguising it.
Festival timing and audience address
The world premiere at Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look in April 2026 positioned the film for programmers already scouting hybrid work. A subsequent slot at Baltimore’s New/Next festival in October keeps it in conversation with East Coast arthouse crowds.
Those audiences recognize the suburban Northeast settings and the generational mix of parents, grandparents, and newborns. The film offers no crisis, only the slow accrual of errands that define most lives.
Connor’s recent credits on prestige projects such as Remarkably Bright Creatures and HBO’s The Chair Company bring additional viewers who may not usually seek experimental nonfiction.
Production scale and creative分工
Connor served as both co-director and cinematographer, shaping the handheld intimacy that lets scenes breathe. Her Bolex inserts supply the only overt aesthetic rupture in an otherwise plain visual field.
Stankus handled writing, directing, and editing. His background in short-form hybrids prepared him to stitch eight years of footage into six coherent chapters without explanatory titles or chapter cards.
The modest crew size kept the project sustainable across nearly a decade. No large grants or studio attachments appear in the credits; the film’s existence owes more to persistence than to conventional financing.
Critical language and early reception
Reviewers have already labeled the film both “a home movie in the truest word” and proof that “there’s always something profound to be found in the quotidian.” Those phrases capture the tonal balance reviewers admire.
Critics also note how the hybrid documentary film refuses the usual markers of importance. No one gets sick, no secrets surface, and yet the cumulative weight feels substantial.
The title itself comes from a family member’s Vegas anecdote. A stranger’s throwaway line—“It goes that quick”—became the governing metaphor for every scene that follows.
After the final cut
Stankus and Connor have indicated they will continue filming the same families on an ad-hoc basis. Any future footage could extend the existing chapters or stand alone as further installments.
For now, the completed film offers a model for other filmmakers who want to treat domestic routine as material rather than backdrop. The approach requires patience more than budget, and trust more than access.
Where the trivial keeps its depth
It Goes That Quick demonstrates that a hybrid documentary film can locate meaning without manufacturing stakes. By staying close to the grocery list and the commute, the directors let time itself become the drama, and the footage becomes an argument for paying attention while the days are still happening.
