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KILLING TIME
12 June 2013, Huntsville, Texas.
In Huntsville State Penitentiary preparations are underway for execution #499.
No one pays much attention when the road outside the prison is cordoned off. It lasts for just an hour. The relatives of the victims and the prisoner, the guards in the towers, the ministers, the few journalists, the handful of demonstrators; everyone has their own way of killing the last few hours of Elroy Chester’s life.
In a cinema direct style, Killing Time documents the killing of time during the hours leading up to the execution. Killing Time is about passing time and about the pain of having to watch someone die.
2013 / 54 mins / HD Cam
Credits
photography Adri Schrover, n.s.c
Stef Tijdink, n.s.c.
sound recording Diego van Uden
Benny Jansen
editing Jos Driessen
sound design Hugo Dijkstal
producer Eric Velthuis
comm. editor Barbara Truyen
tv network
produced by KV FILMS
international sales
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Press
A subtle observational film creating a shocking story on banality of killing
jury report - Inconvenient Films - Vilnius 2014
Less a polemic against the death penalty than a jarringly composed piece of "present tense" filmmaking...
Clayton Dillard - Festivals 2014
The result is a many-voiced work with great emotional potency, some very striking images and a cohesiveness that pushes well beyond Herzog’s work on the same subject. ****
Daniel Walber
Chilling and racially provocative
Robert Greene, Sight & Sound
This patiently infuriating chronicle of Texas at its racially polarized worst is all true.
Vadim Rizov - Filmmaker Magazine
A sense of inhumanity prowls below the surface of the film, tugging at the director’s compassionate, watchful gaze. There was no other film I saw at the festival that said so much by showing so little.
Rustin Thompson - The Restless Critic
There is an unpretentious, lived-in quality throughout the film that shows a director at the top of his game, interested in something bigger than a polemic about capital punishment. By the end, Killing Time trembles with humanity, transcending its small details and approaching a universal truth involving human nature, guilt, forgiveness, good and evil, and so much more.
True/False - Paul Sturz
One of 12 films to premiere at the 2014 True/False Film Fest, Killing Time is sure to be one of the most thought-provoking documentaries of the weekend.
Adrienna Donica - VOX Magazine