According to Honess Roes, “Taxonomy for documentary” something can be considered an animated document if it is recorded or created frame by frame, it concerns the world, not its creator’s world, and has been presented and/or received as a documentary.
“Another Day of Life” marks the first attempt to translate the work of Ryszard Kapuściński (a reporter from the Polish Press Agency) into the language of film, both animated and documentary. However, the book on which the film is based is less of an impassive account and more of a personal diary of what happened in Angola in 1975.
It features surreal sequences that depict the world around the writer from the perspective of his emotions and feelings. This, in turn, creates a movie about Kapuściński himself. Thus, although the animation accurately describes the events in Angola, it cannot qualify as a documentary. It was created frame by frame but focuses on the world partly imagined by its creator. Nor was it presented as a document by its producers. However, I argue that the purpose, in this case, was to demonstrate subjective experience. It certainly lacks objectivity in what we see on the screen, an argument by Christina Formenti, but the film does not claim to be impartial. Moreover, it separates the “author’s thoughts” (surreal scenes) from true-to-life events (realistic scenes).