The Wolves is a spiritual sister to Sean Baker’s The Florida Project. Instead of a boisterous white mum and daughter living in a motel by Disney World, The Wolves features a single mum with two young boys that have just crossed the border into the United States. The kids are happy to follow their mum and spend more and more days passing time in a shabby apartment on the understanding that they’re going to Disneyland.

The two boys are stuck at home everyday making their own entertainment whilst their mum works double shifts to try and create a better future. There’s no school for them to go to and they’re forbidden from leaving the apartment. Any chances of being caught and deported must be avoided.

Despite being stuck in the apartment all day, The Wolves is presented with a lot of warm nostalgia. There’s a slow and lazy guitar soundtrack that generates the same warm melancholic tones of films imbued in Americana like Mud, Bombay Beach, or even parts of Thelma and Louise. There’s also warmth in the games that the two boys play to keep themselves occupied and the drawings that come to life in their imagination. Even though the melancholic soundtrack and bleak surroundings hint that the American dream is out of reach, their playfulness shows it won’t stop them dreaming.

The Wolves is an ode to the faceless people of America. Not just the immigrants that cross the southern border seeking a better life, but the homeless, and anybody scraping together a life living below the poverty line. A few times in the film, Samuel Kishi Leopo (the director) inserts montages of portraits of people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds living within the new family’s community. All the portraits feature people staring straight into the camera like you might see in a National Geographic magazine, showing them without anything to hide. It shows them purely, in front of their humble homes. What these people have in common is an absence of the white picket fenced house promised by the American dream. It’s a sign that being American, or simply being in America for those that migrate north, doesn’t automatically grant you a well spring to health and prosperity. The Wolves honestly highlights the people that the country has left behind.


For more films from the Berlin film festival, head to our Berlinale home page.

The uncontrollable kid in Mommy

Mommy Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Sexy Moms + One Uncontrollable Kid = Mommy, a film with Canadian Karaoke and Violence. Sounds like a game of Cards Against Humanity right!? A smart-phone like aspect ratio takes headlines in this one in a beautifully shot film about a single mother trying to raise her unpredictably violent son.

From: Canada, North America
Watch: Trailer, Rent on Amazon, Buy on Amazon
Next: We Need to Talk About Kevin, Tangerine, Room
Continue reading “Mommy – Sexy Moms and One Uncontrollable Teenager”
Image result for freedom fields azrebi

Freedom Fields Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Freedom Fields follows a group of Libyan women trying to start up the women’s Libyan football team. They’ve all grown up watching sports stars like Messi and Ronaldo and want to be just like them. However, in a fiercely patriarchal society, their dreams are under threat from extremist preachers and their conservative followers.

From: Libya, Africa
Watch: Trailer
Next: Wadjda, The Eagle Huntress, Girlhood
Continue reading “Freedom Fields – Meet the Libyan Women’s Football Team”

Only The Animals features a bunch of interconnecting narratives spanning across France and Cameroon. Each narrative is connected to the murder of a French woman during a snow storm in rural France. It’s weird, entertaining, and satisfying as every piece of the puzzle falls into place. Even the initially out of place opening of a man riding his bike through Abidjan with a goat on his back is eventually linked in and understood.

It’s a fun ride but I haven’t figured out what’s the point or message beyond ‘things happen by chance’. Not saying that it has to have a message – this film was enjoyable to watch – but it would turn a showy multiple narrative film into something better. Maybe I’m asking for too much after seeing the Trump era unravelling of a white upper class family in 2019s stand out murder mystery, Knives Out.

If anything it could be that everything the people aren’t grateful for gets reversed on them. E.g. Joseph is an inanimate loner who can’t love that ends up loving an inanimate loner who can’t love.

Only The Animals covers a lot but doesn’t feel slumped. While every character could have been given more of a backstory, it does fit the movie to not dwell so much. The fun is in watching the transcontinental story slowly unravel as each characters viewpoint layers onto the next.

Side note: slightly stereotypical story of witch doctors and scammers in Africa, even if it is hilarious watching them do their work to a horny middle aged white guy.

Jamilia's Super 8 footage

Jamilia Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Jamilia is for all women living in patriarchal societies (therefore pretty much all societies) around the world. You’ll get to hear from a number of Kyrgyz women, young and old, married and single, that are hoping for a freer future.

From: Kyrgyzstan, Asia
Watch: Trailer, Rent on Amazon
Next: Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, Liyana, Freedom Fields
Continue reading “Jamilia – Hear from the Women of Kyrgyzstan”