Debut feature of writer-director-star Kit Zauhar that follows young Riley, a philosophy student, surfing the challenges of becoming an adult while she is in her last year at the university.
The cinematography of the movie is very naturalistic with a handheld camera. Owing to its aimless quality, it feels more like a diary experimentation than a cohesive idea taking shape. According to Kit Zauhar, "the structure of the narrative is autobiographical, but the actual like events that feel in the timeline are for the most part not." In a Q&A, she explained she had a crazy last week at college that culminated in her going back to Philadelphia to pursue a man who was not interested in her.
In the movie Riley is often partying here and there with friends, in the apartment she shares with a man she spent one night with, talking to her therapist, or visiting her family. Zauhar uses TikTok-style fragments of videos intersected throughout the movie as a way to convey her generation or the experimental, independent spirit of the movie, although the result might be peculiar. Actual People is a movie that covers themes of an uncertain future, parental pressure, modern mores, and everything relating to young people of this generation. It tries to be humorous, but most of the time the humor feels forced and it isn't funny. The problem is that, although it takes form as it progresses, it still feels like watching pieces of videos disjointed. It has good moments here and there, especially the pants episode and the therapist session, but they never add up to a complete film.
