The Wolfpack, about a family of brothers who rarely left their Manhattan apartment while growing up, was one of the biggest breakouts at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. It raises as many questions as it answers.
Crystal Moselle / Courtesy Sundance Institute
PARK CITY, Utah — On the evening of Jan. 25, six brothers, all clad in black suits and sunglasses, stood in front of a movie screen as a crowd at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival gave them a standing ovation. The Wolfpack, the feature documentary centered on the Angulos, had just premiered at the festival, and — however audiences felt about the film itself — the brothers' mere presence in Park City was enough to not only bring those in attendance to their feet, it also had some audience members in tears. After all, according to the film, as of just a few years ago, these six young men had barely stepped foot outside of their New York City apartment in their entire lives.
After the premiere, The Wolfpack quickly became one of the biggest breakout films at Sundance, ultimately winning the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize and getting snapped up for distribution by Magnolia Films (which is planning for a release in the second quarter of 2015). It's not surprising, considering the uniqueness of The Wolfpack, which is presented almost impressionistically by director Crystal Moselle; there are no title cards, no talking heads, and no narrators providing context to the Angulo brothers' story, nor how Moselle came to film them. Yet, the film still leaves a profound impression, as we learn how the Angulos came to start leaving their home, and how their love for movies and filmmaking sustained them through what is presented as a painfully isolating childhood.
And the Angulo brothers' abiding passion for movies is what apparently gave birth to The Wolfpack in the first place. In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Moselle recounted serendipitously seeing the Angulo brothers while walking through New York's East Village in 2010. Fascinated by their long hair and unusual apparel — they were all dressed in black suits, like in Reservoir Dogs — she said she chased them down and asked them who they were. The kids' guard dropped after learning Moselle was a filmmaker, a friendship emerged, and at first, that's basically all it was.
An example of the Angulo brothers' movie reenactments, this time of The Usual Suspects.
"I started showing them cameras," Moselle said. "And then I would just, like, film little interviews with them. It was just this kind of collaborative thing."
During roughly the first four months of their friendship, Moselle said she realized the brothers, who ranged in age from 18 to 11 at the time, weren't just interested in movies — they communicated almost exclusively through the language of cinema, born from their habit of staging elaborate reenactments of their favorite films. "They would be like, 'We do that film!'" Moselle said. "And I would be like, 'What are you talking about?' And they said, 'Oh, we reenact it.' … I was filming them in the park once, and they did a reenactment of The Fountain. It was really beautiful. And I was, like, 'Oh, show me more!' And then they just went through the process of how they did the reenactments."
By this point, Moselle said she also began to understand the highly unusual circumstances of the brothers' upbringing. According to the film, their father, Oscar, is a Peruvian acolyte of the Hare Krishna movement, and had moved his American wife, Susanne, and their growing family into a housing project on the Lower East Side when their oldest children were very young. Fear of rampant crime in their neighborhood apparently compounded Oscar's deep mistrust of society in general and, as a result, according to The Wolfpack, they rarely left their apartment. The brothers — given Sanskrit names by their father, Bhagavan, Govinda, Narayana, Mukunda, Krsna, and Jagadesh — explain in the documentary that growing up, they were usually only allowed to leave their apartment a half dozen times in a year. One year, they say, they never left their home at all. Their only connection to the outside world — and their only means of expressing themselves within the tiny one bound by their apartment's walls — was through the thousands of movies their father allowed them to watch.
"I was just realizing this was a bigger story," said Moselle, who explained that she asked the brothers if she could make a documentary about them. When they agreed, she said she began visiting their family's apartment and filming them, sporadically at first, and then more regularly, over a roughly four-year span. Slowly, the brothers began opening up to her, as well as their mother, Susanne, and finally, after what appears to be a very slow thaw, their father, Oscar, as well. (According to press notes provided by The Wolfpack's Sundance publicist, the brothers' older sister Visnu has a genetic disorder called Turner's Syndrome, which stunts mental and physical development and is why she is largely absent from the film.)
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