Framed by the unearthing of a time capsule from 1990 (phone books and VHS cassettes, anyone?) and a new “time cube” being loaded up in Singapore, filmmaker Tan Pin Pin’s documentary draws just enough from its banal scenes of daily life in the city-state to sustain interest.

There’s a serenity to this photographic, non-narrative, non-narrated work that captures the tidiness and orderliness of this bustling Southeast Asian cosmopolis. Vacant roadways, well-behaved rows of students quietly reading, malls devoid of human presence, tree stumps being ripped out of construction sites—all are up for observation without any overt commentary. But it’s perhaps one of the film’s initially enigmatic shots—an underwater view of a polar bear running in circles through water—that is the most unexpectedly revealing of what the film is indicating, not just by what is depicted but also by what is felt.