The debut feature film from Ukrainian filmmaker Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy is 2014's The Tribe (or Plemya in its native land), a challenging picture shot with a cast made up entirely of deaf actors. As such, the movie has no dialogue and is performed in Ukrainian sign language. This might seem gimmicky but once you get used to it this decision proves to be an interesting one, resulting in a film that is, to be blunt, quite a challenging picture.

The film revolves around a young man named Sergey (Grygoriy Fesenko) who is the new arrival at a remote boarding school that caters to deaf youth. It isn't long after his arrival that Sergey learns that there is essentially a criminal hierarchy to the school. The other students are frequently out robbing people on the trains, holding up pedestrians in town or forcing some of the girls into prostitution. It takes some time for the other students involved in all of this to warm up to the ‘new kid' but eventually he starts to gain some acceptance among his peers. The fact that the principal (Tatiana Radchenko) and the other staff members not only turn a blind eye to this but actually enable the students is clearly a problem.

Things get complicated for Serhiy when he falls in love with one of the girls, Anya (Yana Novikova) which, not surprisingly, puts him in conflict with the other members of the so-called tribe.

At two hours and fifteen minutes in length this one is a bit of an endurance test but stick with it. As dark as the subject matter gets (and it does get pretty dark) this cross between Lord Of The Flies and Larry Clark's Kids does a pretty impressive job of pulling you into its bleak world. Getting used to the fact that there is no dialogue and no music takes a bit of time but as the story plays out, the characters evolve and the story sets down some roots it starts to matter less to the point where, once you hit the half way mark, you almost forget that no one is talking. The actors very definitely communicate, and you will more often than not even understand them, but they do it with sign language (which goes untranslated) and body language.

What sound there is in the picture, however, is used quite powerfully. The sound of footsteps, the rumble of a truck or a train and maybe most poignantly of all the sound of one character slapping another in face over and over again and then at one point the sound of Anya crying… it all hits you pretty hard and really makes you pay attention to the types of noises that go largely unnoticed in more traditional films. It's also interesting to note that for a movie that is as reliant on visual storytelling as this one is, Slaboshpytskiy goes not for flashy edits and constant jump cuts but instead for frequently very slow and clearly deliberate long takes. As such, be prepared to concentrate on the picture if you want to get the most out of it. Those with a short attention span need not apply.

Grygoriy Fesenko and Yana Novikova easily carry the film, which is impressive not only because they're fairly young but because they're not particularly experienced actors. Fesenko's character changes pretty drastically a few times before the movie ends but he's easy to buy in the part role, while Novikova is remarkably sympathetic as a young woman who almost constantly exploited by the men around her. The supporting players all do great work here too, there isn't a weak link in the performance chain, but it's the two leads who really make an impression.

As to the film's style and use of violence, when it hits, it hits hard but so too does it use plenty of carefully composed shots to communicate its story with. These always look fantastic, this is an amazing looking film in that regard, but sometimes they come across as so carefully and artfully composed that they do bend reality more than a little bit. You'll just have to suspend your belief or indulge Slaboshpytskiy's occasional dalliances into style over substance, as it really is part of the unique and engrossing experience that is The Tribe.

Video:

The Tribe is presented in an excellent AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 2.35.1 widescreen. Detail is very strong here, though the film is clearly going for a pretty gritty aesthetic and that does carry through into the visuals. Grain is present throughout but there isn't much in the way of actual print damage, which isn't surprising given that this is a pretty recent production. Texture and depth typically impress and while this isn't the most colorful film that you're ever going to come across, the heavy earth tones and grim color scheme of the world that the film explores is reproduced very nicely here. There's no evidence of any noise reduction and the picture is free of compression artifacts. All in all, it looks excellent on Blu-ray.