The Ukrainian film The Tribe, directed by Miroslav Slaboshpitsky is an exercise in gut-wrenching physical, psychological and cinematographic violence.

The all-pervasive aggressiveness crescendos right from the protagonist Sergei’s (Hryhoriy Fesenko) arrival at a school for deaf pupils, when we discover with him the empty and menacing building. The film’s exploration of the school, a no-man’s land where older students rule like tyrants and pull the younger ones into their net of crime, suggests how the supposedly responsible adults actually facilitate this perverted education—some simply do not care or have lost hope, whereas others directly benefit from the prostitution of students.

Lord of the Flies-esque savagery meets the rationality of a military structure—the older boys wear similar black jackets and walk in a semi-conscious formation—yet the extreme aggression sometimes gives way to fleeting moments of fatal vulnerability - the deafness of the pupils is their Achilles heel. The home abortion scene reaches the gruesome apex of both violence and vulnerability, and in so doing the film swears to the viewers that it will go as far as it takes to visually expose ‘life’ and test the very limits of visual communication.

The great originality of The Tribe is its violent refusal to speak: there are neither subtitles nor a voice-over to translate the sign language. Although this concept effectively symbolises the school gang’s insularity and the viewer’s voyeuristic position as both eternal outsider and intimate insider, the sign language conversations can at times feel repetitive despite the expressive acting. The choice to represent a dysfunctional community in total silence may equally hint at the current political situation in Ukraine: in one of the rare school lessons, the teacher points to the EU flag and NATO emblem before waving her hand over Russia on a map of Europe.

Heavy reliance on symbolism is a major motif of the plot that roughly builds on a coming-of-age story, the discovery of the wide world replete with learning, and disillusionment. Sergei and his love, Anna, form an emotionally moving plot dynamic, which is both tender and deeply disturbing. The sheer density of the bleak, dark and hopeless therefore oscillates between hyperrealism and a symbolic flight into a nightmarish realm, which partially accounts for the preponderance of night scenes.

Those who prefer films with a sliver more hope or serendipity, beware. Moreover, the tiny audience at the screening and handful of spectators who left during the film represent how pure filmic brutality, while comprising an interesting experiment, is not something that people really want to see on a Friday night. The Tribe is a film for the film intellectual, the masochistic viewer, or (most often) a combination of the two.

The Tribe is currently showing in cinemas across Cambridge and the UK.