Winner of multiple 2014 Cannes Film Festival Awards, THE TRIBE is an
undeniably original and intense feature debut set in the insular world
of a Ukrainian high school for the deaf. The movie unfolds through the
non-verbal acting and sign language from a cast of deaf,
non-professional actors—with no need for subtitles or
voiceover—resulting in a unique, never-before-experienced cinematic
event that engages the audience on a new sensory level.
Teenage
Sergey (Grigoriy Fesenko), a new student at the boarding school,
realizes immediately that he must prove himself worthy to be brought
under the protective wing of the school gang’s leader to survive
unscathed. After an indoctrination of harmless initiation pranks and
rites, Sergey’s new-found clique soon introduces him to their common
activities of robbery, bribery and prostitution. At first assimilating
seamlessly into his new role in the tribe, he finds himself compromised
as he begins to fall in love with his female classmate—and one of the
gang’s escorts—triggering a sequence of stunningly diabolical events.