The films were released between 2000 and 2004, and are titled Doon School Chronicles (2000), With Morning Hearts (2001), Karam in Jaipur (2001), The New Boys (2003), and The Age of Reason (2004).

In 2005, anthropologist and professor at Temple University, Jay Ruby, described the project in the review paper The Last 20 years of Visual Anthropology: "MacDougall’s recent work on the Doon School in India and my digital ethnographic work on Oak Park (Ruby 2005) are attempts to continue an exploration that began with Rouch (Jean Rouch).

"[9] MacDougall first learnt about The Doon School in Dehradun in 1991, while making Photo Wallahs in the nearby hill town of Mussoorie, but did not visit it till 1996.

The opening shot in the final cut is not of the boys, school grounds and buildings, or anything that would provide context and ease the viewer into an unfamiliar setting.

[23] Duration: 140 minutes The film is divided into ten chapters and offers an overview of various aspects of life inside the school.

Thus the landscape—understood as terrain, architecture, objects, shapes, textures, colors, movement, choreography, and so on—comes to be reconfigured as an active agent in, rather than a passive backdrop to, the forging of subjectivity," wrote Grimshaw.

[29] Aparna Sharma, Indian documentary filmmaker and theorist, has discussed the effect created by his camerawork: "MacDougall's sustained observation of the students' bodies complements the verbal discourses in the film ... the subjects consistently reference the camera and the whole gamut of their gestures and movements reveal how their bodies and its vocabularies are intimately tied to and shaped by the spaces they occupy.

He is shown studying, participating in field hockey, gymnastics, singing, and struggling to settle into the house and accept the authority of senior boys.

MacDougall later wrote, "What I found curious was that although I said little, the conversation revolved quite naturally around me and the camera, as if my presence acted as a focus or stimulus for it.

It has been noted for its distinct style that is different from the other four films, as the subject asserts his own agency through mannerisms and "outpourings of talk" that appear to tilt the balance of the filmmaking process.

[37] "The film is a testament to the skill of MacDougall—his ability to become a participant in the process and its complex choreography, while at the same time resisting the impetus toward closure or summary," Grimshaw wrote in her book Observational Cinema.

"[9] Film editor and novelist Dai Vaughan wrote in the Visual Anthropology journal: "Without doubt the Doon Project will provide plentiful material for discussion of such matters as the place of such a school in a democratic society; the acculturation of children; how an elite perpetuate its values.

In following the boys' daily routines and dramas, the film also affords us a rare glimpse at processes of postcolonial Indian identity formation.

"[41] Anna Grimshaw, Professor at the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Emory University, reviewed the project in her book Observational Cinema: Anthropology, Film, and the Exploration of Social Life: "In working observationally, aligning his own practice as a filmmaker with the everyday process of children's learning (rather than commenting on a place outside of them), MacDougall attempts to generate the conditions in which his own understanding might be transformed by the agency of his subjects.