When You Finish Saving the World

When You Finish Saving the World centres on Evelyn, who runs a shelter for people escaping domestic abuse and has built her life around helping others. At home, she cannot reach her teenage son Ziggy, an aspiring internet performer wrapped up in his online following and indifferent to much of what happens around him. As mother and son drift further apart, Evelyn pours her attention into Kyle, a quiet teenager staying at the shelter, while Ziggy tries to impress Lila, a politically engaged classmate, by adopting causes he barely understands.

The film is Jesse Eisenberg's directorial debut, which he also wrote; it was followed by A Real Pain and The Debut. Julianne Moore plays Evelyn and Finn Wolfhard plays Ziggy, with Billy Bryk as Kyle, Alisha Boe as Lila, Jack Justice as Jackie and Jay O. Sanders as Roger. Emma Stone, Dave McCary and Ali Herting produced the A24 and Fruit Tree release, which runs 88 minutes.

Released in January 2023, the film drew modest audience scores, sitting at 5.7 on IMDb from around 6,300 votes and 5.8 on TMDB from a much smaller sample of 141. A critics' rating of 6.1 from 155 reviews puts professional response slightly above viewer response, though all three measures cluster around the middle of the scale.