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Posted: 2015-06-11T12:31:11Z | Updated: 2017-12-07T03:20:09Z

the wolfpack sundance

For the Angulo family, "The Godfather" is everything. So are "Lord of the Rings," "The Dark Knight" and "Pulp Fiction." These movies mean so much, in fact, that the six brothers know every word by heart. They've fashioned Legolas' bows and arrows from scratch, used yoga mats to create the Batsuit and celebrated Quentin Tarantino's birthday. But until recently, they'd never sat in a movie theater. In fact, they'd hardly stepped outside of their apartment.

The brothers grew up in a cramped housing project on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where their devout Hare Krishna father, Oscar, confined them at all times, citing a fear of violence and drugs. He wanted 10 children, all of whom would grow their hair long and function as a tribe. Oscar and his wife, Suzanne, only made it to seven (including one sister, Visnu, who has a developmental syndrome), but he held on to the apartment's only key anyway. When their mother wasn't homeschooling them, the brothers watched movies. Lots and lots of movies. And when they weren't watching movies, they were bringing the Battle of Helm's Deep to life in their bedroom or crafting handmade Michael Myers masks.

The siblings were permitted to leave a handful of times each year, if lucky. But one of the first times they broke free and began exploring on their own, back in 2010, the sextet -- Bhagavan, now 23; twins Govinda and Narayana, 22; Mukunda, 20; Krisna, 18; and Jagadesh, 16 -- was standing at an intersection when Crystal Moselle approached them. Curious about this unusual clan of long-haired young men, the director struck up a conversation. When the brothers said they were aspiring filmmakers, a relationship blossomed.

The results of that fateful encounter will be realized on Friday when "The Wolfpack " opens. Moselle spent five years peeking in on the Angulo family, visiting their small apartment to make a documentary about these young men who used popular culture as a means of coping with isolation. Sometimes somber and sometimes brimming with hope, "The Wolfpack" feels as raw as the experience it depicts. It won the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and the Angulo brothers were on hand in Park City, Utah, to celebrate its victory. They also walked the red carpet at the Tribeca Film Festival, where "The Wolfpack" screened in April. The Angulos can do things like that now, because four of them are no longer minors and none of them are settling for prolonged solitude.

the wolfpack

"When I first saw it, for me I would say it was very powerful and very emotional," Bhagavan said of the film. "Walking away with it, I guess I would say I probably did go with the idea that its going to be pretty awesome sharing it with the world. I had absolutely no idea of how that was going to happen, but I knew that it was."

The Angulos were chipper when The Huffington Post sat down with the four eldest brothers, their mother and Moselle last month. Their names are Sanskrit, because Oscar, a Peruvian immigrant, wanted to give them identifiers from one of the world's oldest languages. During our conversation, each brother repeated his name before speaking so as to avoid confusion, and if one forgot, Narayana, who seemed protective of his siblings, gently reminded him.

Many 20-somethings spend their post-adolescence figuring out how to make life decisions for themselves, but this well-read group seems to have skipped that phase. Perhaps it's because they aren't jaded by the social pressures that define one's school days, or maybe it's because the movies they consumed while in captivity gave them a limitless idea of the surroundings they were denied. Whatever it is, the Angulo brothers are going places.

But first, they endured the prying lens of a documentary camera, which brought a rare intruder into their claustrophobic world. As it turns out, they didn't mind performing for an audience other than their parents. Moselle would arrive at random intervals, usually alone, and implant herself in a corner to capture the Angulos' doings. In between Suzanne's daily homeschooling (which doubled as the family's chief source of income) and joint dinner preparations, Moselle documented the brothers' favorite pastime: reenactments of the movies they loved.

They watched their favorite films so many times that they came to know the dialogue by heart. Still, they would transcribe and rehearse every word. "Lord of the Rings" was their first group production -- they once performed all nine hours of Peter Jackson's trilogy in a single span. The Angulos typically treated their remakes like plays, never stopping to correct mistakes. With Moselle's cameras in tow, however, they had to be mindful of who was in the shot and whether everyone was meeting their cues -- and they enjoyed performing even more as a result. All of a sudden, the Angulo brothers were actual movie stars.

"Since they were very young, theyve always been filming each other," Suzanne said. "Maybe theyre building something with Lego toys or theyre playing pirates or knights or warriors and jumping from bed to bed. Whatever they were doing, they would always film, and many times when we wanted something filmed we would give the camera to them and say, 'Just do what you want.' Thats what a lot of our home movies are."

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