Here the Wild Things Are
2024 · 9m · New Zealand
Directed by Kelly Gilbride
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, whimsical
Ecologists and citizen scientists spend three days documenting overlooked urban wildlife during the global City Nature Challenge.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a doc about nature to genuflect at wilderness and tragedy—Gilbride just... lets the city be weird and alive, and somehow that refusal to dramatize is more radical than any eco-screed could be.
A formally composed observational piece that inherits the patient, cataloguing eye of nature documentary while quietly interrogating what 'documenting' even means in an urban context; the restraint is entirely deliberate.
The decision to let the citizen scientists' genuine confusion and delight—not expertise or crisis—be the emotional through-line transforms what could be PBS filler into something that trusts the audience to find wonder in the small, unspectacular act of looking.