‘The Wolfpack’: How Six Brothers Became DIY Movie Stars
When Mukunda Angulo was walking the streets of New York’s East Village in the spring of 2010 with his five brothers — all of them with long black hair, similar features and dark sunglasses — he was used to bystanders taking notice. But when Crystal Moselle approached them, she seemed different.
Speaking by phone, Mukunda, now 20, recalls, “It was the first time anyone had taken a real interest in us and wouldn’t just say, ‘Oh, hi, can I get a picture with you?’ When Crystal met us, she wouldn’t let go because she was so curious: ‘Are you all brothers? Where are you from? Where do you guys live? I’ve never seen you around, why is that?’ We didn’t tell her much at first. We just said, ‘We love movies — what do you do?'”
Moselle replied that she was a filmmaker, setting in motion a transformation for both her and the Angulos that, five years later, produced The Wolfpack, Moselle’s debut feature documentary about the family’s unusual upbringing. (It opens wide on June 19th.) The movie, which won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, chronicles in elliptical, sometimes dreamlike fashion the development of Mukunda, Bhagavan, Jagadisa (who now goes by Eddie), Krsna (who now goes by Glenn) and twins Govinda and Narayana — all of whom lived a sheltered existence with their sister Visnu and their parents in a rundown Lower East Side apartment.
“They wanted to make their own short films,” says Moselle, 34, about that first encounter with the boys on the street. She had made short nonfiction pieces with the likes of Pharrell Williams for The New York Times and co-produced a documentary on Andy Warhol collaborator Taylor Mead; before she met Mukunda, however, she was wondering what she’d do next. A tentative friendship developed between Moselle and the siblings, and soon she learned that Mukunda and his brothers re-created feature films like Pulp Fiction and The Dark Knight in their apartment with amazing faithfulness. Feeling a kinship with these movie-mad brothers, she decided to follow them with a camera as they embarked on a filmmaking career.