Waydowntown

In a city centre, apartment blocks, office towers and shopping malls are joined to each other by glass walkways. Four young people who work there have a bet running: who can hold out longest without going outside. It is day twenty-eight. Over the lunch hour, while the office prepares for the founder's retirement party, everything starts coming apart. Gary Burns shot the film in Calgary's real skywalk network, and the idea of living in a city without ever seeing it comes from there. Modern office life is told neither with anger nor with nostalgia; it simply becomes stranger and stranger. Eighty-four minutes, all in a single day. It is one of the odder things Canadian cinema has made about office work, and what stays with you is the claustrophobia.