The following essay was written by a participant in the 2016 New York Film Festival Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring critics co-produced by Indie Wire, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Film Comment.

On paper, “Everything Else” and “Paterson,” both of which recently screened at the New York Film Festival, are kind of boring. Doña Flor is a government clerk in Mexico City. Paterson is a bus driver and poet in Paterson, New Jersey. Nothing particularly exciting happens to either of them. The two films follow a very similar structure: the characters get up, get ready for work, go to work, work, go home, sleep—and then do the whole thing all over again the next day. Their lives are decidedly unexceptional. So why bother to make films about the repetition of daily life? Isn’t it kind of boring to watch movies about people being bored?

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