“It’s the end of August. The air is sluggish. And it’s hot.” These last three sentences in the voiceover to August's Places, Valérie Pelet’s cinematic travel journal, actually sum up quite well what to expect when you see it: in Super-16 reflecting the heat. The (Western) world, as it presents itself here, might deservedly allow itself to waste a little less energy and effort just once a year. Casually collecting images and notes, out of which a kind of criticism can be formulated. As Walter Benjamin wrote towards the end of his life and his escape, shortly before his suicide in Port Bou in 1942, about the “concept of history”: “It is never a document of culture without at the same time being one of barbarism.” Valérie Pelet’s film stands as emphatic proof of this thesis as it invites repeated viewings.