CFUV @ VFF: Review of The Tribe

Miroslav Slaboshipitsky has brought to fruition perhaps one of the more interesting experiences for a film with The Tribe. It played only last night here at VFF and was extraordinary in that there was no spoken dialogue or subtitles. The whole film is in Ukrainian sign language and the only sound you will hear is the sound of the environment.

The film follows a new teen entering a boarding school for the deaf and mute. We enter into a world with him and follow him as he is accepted into the gang of teens which bullied him upon arrival. This gang has free reign of the school and seem to have no rules. They commit their fair share of robberies, pimping, and shake downs of other students. We are placed among those that have been abandoned by the rest of their society. The camera is adept at following the group with some great tracking shots of their movements at night as well as some stellar long takes with very little camera movements of both beautiful and bleak subject matter. This film gets very real with subject matter like violence, illegal abortion, and prostitution among these characters and thus the film is not for everyone. The violence is brutal and of a reality that is rarely seen in modern Hollywood films. It is very well done and I do not feel that it should have been cut. We are faced with the severity of their situation and are with them at their worst moments. All the actors in this film are actually deaf themselves which adds to the authenticity of this film.

This film works as a new piece in film history but also as a shout out to silent films of the past when one didn’t need dialogue to understand love and hate. I would greatly recommend checking out The Tribe if it does come back to play here or when it is released for home video.