It's a film that embodies the life of a young deaf boy who enters a boarding school. As time goes by, the boy's life turns into a new arrival in an institutionalized system of organized crime. It seems that this will happen to one of the girls who have been appointed as pimps. The film was portrayed through Ukrainian sign language with no subtitles.
It would be a mistake to go along to this film unprepared - take note of that censor's warning. But it is a bold and brilliant work of great originality that will extend the horizons of even the most dedicated cineaste.
The Tribe revels in the distance it leaves between its audience and its characters, but in placing viewers on the outside, it also creates an experience that's almost perversely empathetic.
A difficult film, rich in scenes that might not be for those who are sensitive. The Tribe is made with confidence and an overwhelming strenght to create hells that are hard to forget. [Full review in Spanish]
Slaboshpitsky... has definitely delivered something rare and singular -- the sort of experience we hope to find in cinema, not just because it's new and we haven't seen it, but because it's truly stimulating work.
The images created by Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi are so powerful that using actual words could break the illusion of the closed universe seen on screen. [Full review in Spanish]
There is nothing else like The Tribe, at once a searing, singular vision of a particular time and place and a brutal metaphor for the wounded human condition.
San Diego Reader
July 31, 2015
If there's one place where love has no place, it's here.
The movie is leisurely as well as graphic in its representation of sex and violence and, predicated on long takes, is visceral in a wholly unexpected way.