When We Encounter the World

About This Movie

So, there's this film called 'When We Encounter the World' from 2024, and it’s a documentary that dives deep into this bizarre experiment from 1934. An amateur-scientist couple set up the Automeris Project, which involved kids living alone in a forest. The atmosphere is strangely haunting, with their self-made films sprinkled throughout, accompanied by live music that feels both eerie and nostalgic. The pacing is deliberately slow, which lets you really sink into the oddity of it all. The kids’ performances are unsettling yet captivating, revealing layers of survival and innocence. It’s a distinctive blend of documentary and experimental film, raising questions about nature, nurture, and the human experience in a pretty unsettling way.

Interesting blend of documentary and experimental stylesFocus on themes of survival and isolationCaptures a unique slice of early 20th-century science