By John Corrado

The 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto

In 2012, director Jeff Orlowski-Yang released his documentary Chasing Ice, a beautifully shot portrait of National Geographic photographer James Balog. The film followed Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey project, which saw him capturing stunning time-lapse images of melting glaciers, to help visually document the impacts of a changing climate.

Teaming with first time director Sarah Keo, Orlowski-Yang now returns to this subject in his mid-length documentary Chasing Time, which follows Balog and his crew as they travel to Iceland to remove the final remaining camera after fifteen years. It’s a way for Balog to officially bring the EIS project to a close, after capturing hundreds of thousands of images.

Seeing the time-lapse images of melting glaciers was moving enough on its own in Chasing Ice, and seeing Balog return to say goodbye to the project brings an extra emotional weight to Chasing Time. As the story takes shape over the course of the film’s brisk 39 minutes, it becomes more of a reflective piece about the reality of running out of time. As a companion piece to Chasing Ice, Chasing Time serves as a bittersweet coda to Balog’s journey of capturing the melting ice caps.

Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)

Chasing Time screens as part of Shorts Program 2 at the 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here.