Icarus Films: Time Thieves

Time Thieves

Directed by Cosima Dannoritzer

85 minutes / Color
French; English / English subtitles
Closed Captioned
Release: 2019
Copyright: 2018

Forget water, oil and rare minerals – there is a new resource everyone wants: our time. TIME THIEVES reveals how companies monetize our time without our knowledge and how the social networks have, in their own words, become ‘the new clockmakers’.

TIME THIEVES is an eye-opening investigation into how our time became a currency; why 'time poverty' is on the rise and how the more we try to save time, the less we have. Who hasn’t come across the situation where an airline has us printing our own boarding passes and checking in our own luggage, saving the company a fortune in working hours? Who hasn’t spent hours assembling a piece of furniture, or struggled with an automatic cashier? Haven’t we all asked ourselves who should be paying whom for doing all the work? Award-winning director Cosima Dannoritzer blends remarkable archival footage and heart-breaking stories with testimonies from leading experts in a documentary that was filmed on location in Japan, USA, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany.

TIME THIEVES investigates how time has become money, how the clock has taken over both our working and personal lives, and how we can take back control over this precious, but finite resource.

"An incisive history of how the development of capitalism has turned time into an incredibly valuable commodity that shapes and misshapes nearly every aspect of our lives. Labor scholars, educators, and activists will appreciate how Time Thieves traces the manifestation of time theft in different nations and cultures.” —William Burchner, Ph.D., Rutgers University, in Labor Studies Journal

“Entertaining! Cosima Dannoritzer shows a mastery of her [subject:] the role of time in the context of business.” —Matt Nelson, Unreal TV

"Without realizing it, we have become our own travel agents and the cashiers at our supermarket and bank branch; we even take our own orders in many restaurants. Time Thieves is a documentary that travels around the world to investigate how time became a lucrative financial commodity, how the clock has taken over both our working and personal libes, and how we can reclaime control of time.” —Amos Lassen, Cinema Pride

"Essential viewing! Hones in on the ways in which the capitalist system makes us slaves to the clock. Of great value to sociology and political science." —Louis Proyect, Counterpunch