Silence is gruesome in this confrontational deaf-school drama. Why we’re excited? Shot entirely in sign language – without any subtitles – this Ukrainian thriller set in an institution for deaf teenagers promises to be an intense and disturbing experience, whether or not you have the ability to hear. A complex attack on society’s approach to deafness, this is also a hard-hitting and unrelenting crime story.

Time Out London

Love, crime and brutality reign in a school for young deaf people in a hugely original Ukrainian drama, acted entirely using sign language.

• Director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
• Producers Valentyn Vasyanovych, Iya Myslytzka
• Screenwriter Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
• With Grigoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova
• Ukraine 2014
• 132 mins
• Sales Alpha Violet

Jonathan Romney:

Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s audacious debut is not only a compelling, confrontational drama, it’s also an innovative rethinking of cinema’s language of sight and sound. Featuring a superb cast of young deaf performers, The Tribe is set in a boarding school for young deaf people, where new arrival Sergey (Fesenko) is drawn into an institutional system of organised crime, involving robbery and prostitution. But he crosses a dangerous line when he falls for Anna (Novikova), one of the girls to whom he’s assigned as pimp. Depicting a closed world with its own unforgiving laws, The Tribe is part-thriller, part-bad dream, with often startling use of intense sexuality and violence. Containing no spoken dialogue, but only sign language – and no subtitles – the film subverts the pieties that often attend cinema’s depiction of deaf people. Dazzlingly executed and shot in long complex takes, it is one of the outstanding discoveries of 2014.