Free Talks: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy and Yana Novikova (The Tribe)

The Tribe packed the house when it screened earlier this year at New Directors/New Films, but Ukrainian director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy unfortunately wasn’t able to attend the festival. He will now be in town with lead actress Yana Novikova to talk about his crime-drama on the day of its release in the U.S.

Winner of multiple 2014 Cannes Film Festival Awards (including the coveted Critics’ Week Grand Prix), The Tribe is a silent film with a difference: its entire cast is deaf and nonverbal and the “dialogue” is strictly sign language—without subtitles. Set at a spartan boarding school for deaf and mute coeds, The Tribe follows new-arrival Sergey (Grigory Fesenko), who’s immediately initiated into the institution’s hard-as-nails culture with a beating before ascending the food chain from put-upon outsider to foot soldier in a criminal gang that deals drugs and pimps out their fellow students. With implacable camerawork and a stark, single-minded approach worthy of influential English director Alan Clarke, Slaboshpytskiy overcomes what may sound like impossible obstacles to tell a grim but uncannily immersive story of exploitation and brutality in a dog-eat-dog world.

Free tickets will be distributed at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center box office (144 West 65th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam) on a first-come, first-served basis starting one hour prior to the talks. Limit one ticket per person, subject to availability.

Sponsored by HBO®