WITH THEIR LONG dark hair, black suits, and sunglasses, the six Angulo brothers look like characters from a Quentin Tarantino film as they walk down the colourful streets of New York’s Lower East Side.
The gang – or wolfpack – do have a life story worthy of a film. But though they know the dialogue in Pulp Fiction by heart, their own personal tale is more of a mental struggle than physical one.
They met director Crystal Moselle (35) in 2010, when she saw them walking down the street. That chance meeting turned into the filming of a documentary that has gone on to enthral people worldwide.
It shows how the brothers’ parents – Peruvian Oscar and his hippie American wife, Susanne – met on the Inca Trail, later relocating to New York. Oscar wanted to have a large brood, but he also wanted to keep his family safe. And safety meant locking them into the house.
As the boys got older, they began to question their circumstances. That was around the same time that they met Moselle.
Where it all began
“I was walking down the street and the boys ran past me and I ran towards them because something about them was very intriguing,” Moselle tells TheJournal.ie. “I was just enamoured by them and it really became… I just had to run after them.”
The boys told her that they lived on Delancey St. “Govinda said ‘what do you do for a living?’ and I said I work in film and they got very excited and said ‘we’re into film’,” recalls Moselle.
In a “cool, organic process”, they began spending more time together, and Moselle asked would they work on a project with her. That turned into a documentary, which included home footage shot by the brothers while they were growing up.
During the making of the Wolfpack, Moselle discovered that the brothers had spent most of their lives cooped up in their apartment, unable to leave because of the influence of their father.
Moselle’s film captures the true spirit of the brothers: boys who learned about the world through watching and then re-enacting their favourite films. They would painstakingly type out film scripts, hand-make costumes from yoga mats and cereal boxes, record sound effects and make their own props.
“I just thought that they were interesting kids,” says Moselle. “It was a very organic process; we didn’t really know exactly what I was doing, I was just hanging out and discovering their world and eventually I discovered this really insane back story.”
At first, the filming was sporadic, but soon it cemented into a proper project.
A slow reveal
“I didn’t know what was going on at the beginning,” says Moselle. “It was a slow process and they revealed what they wanted to reveal.”
In the film, Moselle doesn’t try to answer every question, but instead lets the story evolve naturally.
I feel like a lot of people say it [has] no judgements and it has… you know, it feels honest. I think it’s just about letting every side of the story to be told. I don’t feel like there’s good and evil, I feel like there’s many shades in who they are. It’s up to the audience to make up their mind about it.
The brothers are on the publicity tour with Moselle. “They’re loving it,” she says, adding that they have been getting to meet film-makers and people they are fans of, like David O Russell.
She enjoys being able to “step back and watch them create the world” before them.
What is it that she most connects with about the Angulo brothers?
“Their excitement for life and positive viewpoint and endless creativity.”
It has been a “wild ride” so far, and there’s still more to come: Moselle and the brothers are writing a script together. There won’t be another documentary, but there will be more projects.
“It’s been incredible: the movie, travelling the world, and the boys being able to go everywhere that they’ve always wanted to go,” says Moselle.
The Wolfpack is in Irish cinemas now.
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