NZIFF Film Review: "The Wolves" ("Los lobos") (2019).

From the director of We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa) comes The Wolves (Los lobos). This Mexican family drama film directed by Samuel Kishi, and written by Kishi, Luis Briones, and Sofía Gómez-Córdova. Max and Leo are eight and five years old and have just immigrated to the US with their mother Lucía. Their days pass inside a tiny apartment, while they wait for their mother to come back, as they hold on to the hope of traveling to Disneyland.

The film stars Martha Reyes Arias, Maximiliano Nájar Márquez, Leonardo Nájar Márquez and Cici Lau. What sets this film apart is that the cast and Kishi do a great job of presenting these characters in an unjaundiced, authentic way. As Lucia digs herself a hole time and time again, and as the inevitable finally catches up with her and her children, we deeply feel for them and their well-being. Keenly observational and heart-wrenchingly real. The young actors steal the show in this guy-wrenching drama.

It’s superficially less bleak than We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa), rendered by Kishi in tropical colours, but poverty lurks throughout. The charm, wrenching emotion, and compassion that Kishi finds in his characters are enhanced by his unique touches of humor and unlikely optimism. The film is a rainbow in a rainstorm illuminating the nuances of life that consume us all, no matter where we live, how much money we make, what our social status is, how we choose to spend our time and who we spend it with. Kishi clearly loves every single person he puts inside his camera and feeds off their nasty wise humor of the doomed. The film is deeply honest. The characters in this film might be poor, desperate and often completely out of their minds, but there is a curious species of warmth, compassion and even honour in their worlds. It's a story about poverty that neither celebrates or condemns its characters. Lucia's exploits are entertaining and yet an air of jeopardy hangs heavy over every minute of the movie. With a deeply moving emotional current, the film ictionally portrays a growing marginalized section of the American population. The film manages to surpass We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa) by displaying an even broader social frieze. And all the characters, even the most insignificant, have their two or three seconds of dignity. It's not attempting to push a narrative as much as it aims to highlight a subsection of society that rarely makes its way onto the big screen. It follows not only their adorable adventures during summer break but also the hardships of poverty in modern America. Some of the most heartbreaking, affirming filmmaking in recent memory, the kind only achieved by a director with the utmost sympathy for their characters. A picture of people barely holding, who are complex and damaged, but look out for one another when no one else will. Real and raw, crushing and beautiful, and a scathing indictment of capitalism and a system that treats people as disposable.

Simon says The Wolves (Los lobos) receives:

Also, see my NZIFF review for The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog.