The Wolfpack by Crystal Moselle

Locked away from the outside world in a Manhattan apartment, the Angulo siblings satisfy their curiosity, imagination and need to explore by re-enacting their favorite movies.

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The Wolfpack documentary is about six kids who live in New York, who see New York every day, but had never experienced New York or anywhere outside their apartment. The one and only thing they have been doing to get information about the outside world is watching over 5,000 movies on DVD over and over again. Reenacting the movie is how they learned to socialize as if one day they will have a chance to go out – they did, the filmmakers document the entire process of the family unlocking themselves step by step.  

This film, directed by Crystal Moselle, won the 2015 U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, is probably one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. It’s amazingly shot even though it doesn’t have any fancy shots, there are even jump cuts, the shaky hand shot and on camera zoom. Besides the story itself, the editing of this documentary is what makes it a much stronger piece of work.

Throughout the documentary, we see that the Angulo kids escape from the “cage,” they walk on the street, go to the beach, watch a movie in an actual theater the first time in their life. Their dad was furious about the kids talking to people from “outside”, but later we see him gradually convinced by his children to accept what they do. By the end as they all go out — after locking themselves up in the apartment for almost 15 years, the kids moved into their own apartment,  like their father says, “we’ll do better, that’s what I feel, and I see.”  

Official Trailer: (full movie is available on Netflix)

http://www.magpictures.com/thewolfpack/

You can watch more clips (the Grand Budapest Hotel one is pretty great.) they made on the website above ˆˆˆˆˆˆ, or purchase a Blu-ray DVD to support this incredible movie. Click on “watch on demand” it will show you all the sites that you can go to watch the full movie. 

24:08-– My favorite shot (24:46-25:08). One of the Angulo kids dressed up as Batman, stands by the fences window that separates him from the outside world. “Because it felt like another world… I did everything I could to make that world come true, to escape my world,” he says. It’s an incredibly depressing shot that him, as “Batman”, is not able to do what Batman can do. But he fully believes that one day, he can go into his dream world without having any fear of his dad, though he knows it’s impossible at that point. This shot is not only visually breathtaking, but it slows the story down and creates a more cinematic moment to a documentary film, and it also makes the audience more curious about the unanswered question — do they go out eventually?

27:40-28:55– The first time one of them escapes, here the pace becomes super fast and random, which excellently create the chaos of the city to the 15-year-old boy who sees and experience the different world he had dreamed about. 

1:15:53-the end– The ending that we finally see all their family members are a part of the “outside world”, either for the first time or again, their reaction, especially their mom’s, is priceless.

I also think it’s an excellent choice to put the film that the kids made at the end. Because those kids were acting as others in the movie to think how they’re going to fit themselves in the world, and now they created a film that they can play themselves, doing things they see fit to interact with the outside world.