The Tribe

A few years after The Artist (2011) reminded everyone that silent movies exist, a strange film has imbued the term with a whole new meaning. The Tribe, by the tongue-twistingly named Ukrainian director Miroslav Slaboshpytskiy, is set in a dingy boarding school for deaf teens in Kiev. Like a foreign film without subtitles, it plays out entirely in sign language, leaving the average viewer to piece together the plot from the action.

And what action: in this school the bullies are kings, primal violence is the law, and drugs and prostitution are rife. Eerily, all that can be heard on the soundtrack is ambient noise: coughs, the shuffle of feet, moans of pain. At last year’s London Film Festival, The Tribe stunned and disconcerted critics in equal measure.