The People We Keep

Documentaries That Actually Stick With You

I've been watching documentaries for about twenty years now, and there's this particular one that shows up on my screen maybe once a year, usually when I'm trying to fall asleep but end up staying up until 2 AM because I can't stop thinking about it. The People We Keep isn't flashy. It doesn't try to shock you with dramatic reveals or tearful goodbyes. It just sits with its subjects long enough to become something real. Ryan Williams directed it, and he spent roughly four years embedded with an Amish family in Holmes County, Ohio. The film follows three people whose lives intersect in ways that feel completely ordinary until you step back and realize how radical they actually are. There's a young Amish man named Jacob who falls for a non-Amish woman. There's Sarah, his sister, who's already left the community and struggles with her guilt about being the "black sheep." And there's the community itself, which watches all of this unfold without really saying anything at all.

The People We Keep and What Makes It Work

Most documentaries about isolated communities fall into one of two traps. Either they treat the subjects like anthropological specimens, filming them from behind a glass wall with a narrator explaining everything like we're too stupid to understand on our own. Or they go the other direction and turn the film into a sappy coming-out story with swelling strings and a three-act structure that tells you exactly how to feel at each moment. Williams does neither. He just lives there. The result is that the film feels less like a movie and more like a house you walk into and forget to leave. About 104 minutes long, but it could be twice that. There are long stretches where nothing happens. A woman milks a cow. A man fixes a fence. People sit at a kitchen table and talk about nothing for twelve minutes straight. And in the middle of that nothing, you realize you've learned everything important about who these people are. I remember one specific scene that has bothered me for years. It's not dramatic at all. Jacob is sitting alone on a porch at dusk, and his grandmother comes out and just sits beside him. They don't talk about his relationship with Sarah or the non-Amish girl. She talks about the weather. About how early the frost came this year. About how her husband used to worry about the same thing. And then she gets up and goes inside. That's it. But I've thought about that scene more than any dramatic confrontation in any other film I've seen.

Where to Watch It

The People We Keep had a limited theatrical release in 2024 and is available on several streaming platforms depending on your region. Amazon Prime Video carries it in the United States. It's also on Hulu. If you're outside the US, check Apple TV or Google Play Movies. Physical copies exist on DVD and Blu-ray through standard retailers, though they sometimes go in and out of stock since it's a smaller release from IFC Films. There's no official download option for purchase that I'm aware of. The distributors seem to be holding off on digital ownership releases while the streaming window plays out. So if you want to own it, your best bet right now is the physical media route or waiting for a rental price drop.

What Most People Miss About This Film

Here's something that bugs me about how this documentary gets discussed. Reviewers keep framing it as a film about "choice" — whether Jacob should stay or leave, whether Sarah made the right decision. That's the surface reading and it's not wrong, but it's also not what the film is actually doing. The real subject of the movie is belonging. The way community shapes identity even when you physically leave it. The invisible threads that keep pulling you back even when you've told yourself a hundred times you're done. Williams makes a quiet argument that I think deserves more attention. The Amish community isn't portrayed as oppressive or liberating. It's just there. A system that holds people, sometimes comfortably, sometimes uncomfortably, the way any family system does. The question isn't whether the community is good or bad. The question is what it costs to be outside of it, and what it costs to stay inside. There's a technique Williams uses repeatedly that most viewers don't consciously notice. He frames shots through doorways and windows, literally showing characters as people we're peering at but not fully part of. Even when someone is technically "inside" the community, the camera keeps placing them behind thresholds. It's a visual metaphor that never announces itself. You just feel it after a while.

Problems With the Film

I need to be straight about this because I think it matters. The documentary has a real pacing problem in its second act. Around the forty-five minute mark, the story loses some of its momentum. Williams has collected so much material that he includes scenes that don't add anything new. There's a sequence involving a harvest meal that runs about eight minutes and repeats information we already got from earlier kitchen table conversations. It's patient to the point of self-indulgence, and while that patience is generally the film's greatest strength, here it works against it. Another issue is the sound design. Williams shot on location with natural light and ambient audio, which gives the film its documentary texture, but there are stretches where the audio is so thin and wind-blown that you'll definitely want subtitles even if you're not hard of hearing. I watched it once with the sound off and still understood ninety percent of what was happening. The second time with full audio, I caught details I missed before. Not huge revelations, but meaningful ones. The film also makes a choice that some viewers will find frustrating. It refuses to provide closure. Real life doesn't work that way, and Williams is clearly aware of that. But after spending four years with these people, you want the film to tell you where they ended up. It won't. The credits roll over a scene of normal daily life, and you're left exactly where you were when the film started: uncertain, watching, wondering.

Who Should Actually Watch This

This isn't a film for casual viewing. If you want something you can watch while folding laundry or during a lunch break, look elsewhere. The People We Keep demands your attention in a way that feels almost rude. It asks you to sit with people you barely know and care about them anyway. It's probably for you if you've ever had a family member or friend whose choices you didn't understand but couldn't stop thinking about anyway. If you've ever felt the tension between who you are and where you come from. If you've ever sat on a porch with someone and talked about nothing and realized it was the most honest conversation you'd had all week. The film was released in 2024 and has a runtime of about 104 minutes. It's rated PG-13 for thematic content, though there's nothing in it that would actually upset most viewers. The closest thing to intensity is emotional, not visual. No violence, no explicit content, just people living their lives in a way that makes you examine your own.

I think about that porch scene every time I visit my own family. Not because it's sad or beautiful. Because it's true. That's all Williams was trying to do, I think. Make something true. And most of the time, he succeeds.