Arriving on the same day this summer as the narrative Grand Jury Prize winner at this year’s Sundance, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, is the top documentary winner, The Wolfpack. Directed by Crystal Moselle, it follows siblings raised primarily in a single apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, living an exceedingly sheltered life. Since they were born, they’ve only left their home for at most nine times a year, and in some years, never. To keep busy, they have a collection of thousands of films in which they repeatedly watch TV, transcribing them frame by frame and creating lavish scripts that they will then extravagantly (and frugally) bring to life in their own creative way.
We said in our review, “These teenagers may very well assimilate to normal life, but like any of us, their upbringing will irrevocably shape their future. As a modern update on Grey Gardens with an added tribute to the love for filmmaking, The Wolfpack is an endlessly fascinating documentary, but it’s not quite a great one.” Ahead of a release next month, we now have the first trailer, which includes a quote from yours truly. Check it out below, along with the poster.
Winner of Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, this critically acclaimed documentary follows the Angulo brothers who were locked away from society in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and discovered about the outside world through the films that they watch. Nicknamed the Wolfpack, the brothers spend their childhood re-enacting their favorite films using elaborate homemade props and costumes. With no friends and living on welfare, they feed their curiosity, creativity, and imagination with film, which allows them to escape from their feelings of isolation and loneliness. Everything changes when one of the brothers escapes, and the power dynamics in the house are transformed. The Wolfpack must learn how to integrate into society without disbanding the brotherhood.
The Wolfpack opens on June 12th.