“On the Kolpa River” is a nostalgic and timeless story told (with captions and using reconstructed 10-year old footage) by Aljaz Tepina, as he recalls and observes his family on a river trip. The story is a fitting example of a Story without Words project.

Tepina shoots this nostalgic piece from a first-person witness point of view. His shaky camera and crooked shots add to the immediacy and nostalgic feel of the piece, together with the great use of background sounds, light and color editing (the film is graded to look like old film to complement the nostalgic mood of the piece) to tell the story. His humorous insights into each of his family members evoke emotion—and similar sentiments within our own families—and further cements the story’s sense of timelessness.

Tepina makes use of good compositions and motivated camera movements, including showing his father and brother’s relationship at :38-:42, showing the start of their journey and view of his father and the paddle as it slices through the water at 1:02-1:07, his dad’s personality at 1:55-1:59 and his mom’s quirks at 1:59-2:0. He relies on simple cuts, which works beautifully to move the story along.

Finally, the simple but effective reveal at 2:11-2:16, “we don’t go on Sunday trips anymore,” brings the viewer to the heart-wrenching present moment, where we, together with Tepina, wistfully long for the past and for lost moments all too often taken for granted.