L'expérience Acali

Documentary recounts the baffling Acali Experiment of 1973, in which 11 perfect strangers drifted across the Atlantic on a cramped, motorless raft as part of a "scientific" study on the origins of violence and aggression. Conceived and conducted by radical Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés, the controversial social experiment tasked ten volunteers -- six women, four men, from diverse ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds -- to float from the Canary Islands to the Americas on a vessel designed for minimal privacy and maximal sexual temptation. Forty-five years later, Lindeen replicated the boat on a soundstage and invited the surviving participants to reflect on their 101-day stint aboard the "sex raft" (so-called by scandal-stoking tabloids) and their near-murderous relationship with Genovés, the reckless puppet master who took things dangerously too far.