The protagonist of this documentary by Bergs and Seidenberg, an idiosyncratic Californian entomologist, examines the changes of the world through butterflies and reflects on survival strategies. A poetic, untamed hybrid of essay film and portraiture, it leads us into a world vanishing before our eyes – but it does have one observer who notices everything. And suddenly, everything is alive.

Time is the substance that I am made of, time is a river that carries me away, in the words of Jorge Luis Borges says the epigraph of the film. Seventy-nine-year-old Arthur, who calls himself Art, spends his time among some of the smallest creatures – butterflies. For over five decades he has counted, catalogued, taxidermised and studied them. It’s a slow scientific method: Art retraces the same route again and again, recording millimetres, milligrams, the smallest of units. The entomologist sends emails to his closest people, musing on his day, his daydreams, and reflections on the passage and erosion of time. In counting butterflies, Art counts the days that mark the demise of entire worlds beneath insect wings.

Bergs is fascinated by grand narratives with protagonists the size of a human fingertip. What is the death of an insect that is quiet, even unnoticeable? And what is the death of thousands of insects that marks the Anthropocene era? Bergs is an experienced photographer who turned to directing after studying film in California. During his studies he read a piece on Art Shapiro in The New York Times about insect extinction in the twilight of the climate crisis, and began corresponding with the protagonist of his film. Bergs’ graduation film The Threshold, exploring some of the more unusual corners of the bee and pollination industry, was screened at the RIGA IFF Short Film National Competition in 2020. Co-directed with American filmmaker Siedenburg, this feature film is uncompromising on the flow of time and was shown at the IDFA Luminous showcase, where it was nominated for Best Debut Film.