Get ready for the Angulo brothers who spent their whole young lives in a shabby council flat on the Lower East Side. Their Hare Krishna-damaged father, for whom evil began at his doorstep, forbade any contact with the outside world. No school, no friends. The six brothers were virtually never allowed to go outside. Instead they were home-schooled and had more than 5,000 feature films on DVD, their only window on the world. They retrieved it by creating their own cinema, re-enacting the films for their video camera – faithful to the script, with homemade costumes and props. This made them feel alive.
Crystal Moselle was at the right place at the right time, just like in the movies. The power balance in the flat was just beginning to shift, the brothers dared to make the first steps outside – where they met the filmmaker. Both sides connected instantly through their love of cinema. Once accepted into the “Wolfpack”, the director created the gripping psychological profile of a family in upheaval. The old is still claustrophobically present, while the outside is beginning to show itself as uncertain territory that will not be mastered by the patterns of movie stories – as the brothers suspect.
Matthias Heeder
Prize of the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique 2015
