THE TRIBE
Netherlands/Ukraine, 2014, 126 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Miroslav Slaboshpitski.
The Tribe is a confronting film in many ways.
First of all, all the protagonists hearing-impaired. There is unspoken dialogue in the film, only the use of sign language and no subtitles – but presented in such a way that most audiences will be able to pick up what is happening and assess many of the motivations. While the protagonists do not hear anything, natural sounds that the audience can hear are included in the film. There is no musical score.
With financial assistance from the Netherlands, this is a Ukrainian production, filmed in an old school in Kiev. The settings are grim, old-style institutional buildings, corridors and rooms. The other main setting is a parking area for trucks and truck drivers, again a grim look with desaturated colour.
A young man, Sergei, is seen at the opening of the film seeking directions and finding his way to the school, where he is put in a class, a group of the young men taking him to his room but playing tricks on him, pushing him into a girl’s room, finding him a bunk, going through his belongings, a lot of horseplay but with malice.
Two of the girls are seen changing their clothes, being taken to the truck centre, the young man knocking on all the trucks and drivers picking up the girls for sex. This activity is repeated throughout the film. Sergei is attracted towards one of the girls and begins a sexual relationship with her. The other young men are harsh on him, and, while he seems to go along with their treatment of him, resentment builds up.
Some of the authorities at the school are seen to be in collusion with the young men and with the girls, some visitors also having a relationship with the girls.
The girls want to get out of Ukraine and Italy seems a prospect, one of the contacts organising them to go to the embassy, join the line-up for passports or visas, and able to use contacts to get them passports.
This has a fatal impact on Sergei, who then goes to the rooms of the girls and of the young men, bashing and bludgeoning all of them on the head, killing them – and going into whatever future he has.
The film won many awards at film festivals and commentators noted that it could stand as a symbolic representation life in Ukraine – reinforced after the release of the film by the Russian attacks on Eastern Ukraine and the civil uprising that followed.
Impressive in its way of using sign language without dialogue and music. Depressing in its picture of human nature.
