An Aryan fever dream that was once dubbed "the darkest animated movie ever made", 'The Wolf House' reminds us what evil is capable of.

"Maria is love and care."

An animation film as unsettling and uncanny as The Wolf House only comes around once in a while. A dark and hellish fever dream dubbed "the darkest animated movie ever made" by IndieWire, Cristóbal Léon and Joaquín Cociña's feature debut is a grim fairy tale, inspired by the harrowing case of Colonia Dignidad, an isolated and cult-like commune in Chile founded and tyrannically mastered by post-WOII German emigrant and professional madman Paul Schäfer, who would end up molesting children while turning the place into a torture centre at the service of the military dictatorship by Augusto Pinochet.

Masquerading as a story produced by the leader of a sect in order to indoctrinate its followers, The Wolf House follows María, a young woman who flees the colony after being punished for letting three pigs escape and takes up residence in an abandoned house. From there on, as creative wolves, Léon and Cociña's let loose every safety pin, crafting a sinister visual journey of a physical and mental world that falls apart, destroying and renewing itself time and again. Filmed over five years, this stop-motion nightmare is animated to look like a single sequence shot. Everything is in a permanent state of transformation: the house, the characters, and our stomachs. Few films have so powerfully commented on the consequences of fascism. Enter The Wolf House, and you'll get a liquid Aryan trauma film that reminds us what evil is capable of.

This program screened as part of Kaboom Animation Festival 2024

Showing in this program

The Wolf House

• Christobal Leon / Joaquin Cociña
• Chile, 2018
• 73 min.

The Wolf House tells the story of Maria, a young woman who – after escaping a sect of German religious fanatics – takes refuge in a house in southern Chile. Unfortunately, the house transforms into a nightmarish world. A stop-motion feature inspired by Colonia Dignidad, an isolated colony of Germans and Chileans notorious for the internment, torture and murder of dissidents.