Meet Kids Who Never Left Their Tiny NYC Home & Learned About The World By Watching 5,000 Movies

The strange story of six brothers and one sister who grew up in New York but were never allowed out to explore the city’s streets has become the subject of a new documentary.

The Angulo siblings – Bhagavan, 23, twins Govinda and Narayana, 22, Mukunda, 20, Krisna, 18, Jagadesh, 17, and their sister Visnu – lived with their parents on welfare in a four-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Their father, Oscar, kept the front door locked and no one else was allowed a key.

Home-schooled by their mother, the siblings found an outlet watching movies which gave them a taste, albeit a warped one, of the outside world.

The lives of the Angulo family became the subject of film,The Wolfpack, from director Crystal Moselle.

The documentary won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah last month. The six brothers and their mother Susanne also attended the premiere. Their sister, Visnu, who is the eldest and suffers developmental challenges, did not attend.

The story emerged in 2010, when Ms Moselle met one of the brothers – then aged between 11 and 18 years old – on a rare escape into the outside world.

Ms Moselle described first seeing the brothers, on First Avenue, when they were all walking in a ‘pack’, wearing sunglasses. Their look had been inspired by a favorite film, Reservoir Dogs.

Ms Moselle said: ‘It almost felt as if I had discovered a long lost tribe, except it was not from the edges of the world but from the streets of Manhattan.’

The filmmaker befriended the boys, slowly earned the family’s trust and was invited into their sheltered world, bringing her camera with her.

Ms Moselle said that boy’s mother, Susanne Angulo, slowly opened up to her but described father, Oscar, was a ‘rollercoaster’.

The documentary, which runs to one hour and 24 minutes, follows the siblings’ isolated lives.

‘All exceedingly bright, they have no acquaintances outside of their family and have practically never left home,’ the film’s press release reads.

They fed their imaginations by meticulously re-enacting favorite movies – works by Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorcese among them.

Their movie reconstructions were elaborate – at one point, two of the brothers recreated Batman: Dark Knight Rises’ costumes out of no more than cereal boxes and yoga mats.

The brother says: ‘After I saw the Dark Knight, that made me believe that something was possible to happen. Not because it was Batman, it’s because it felt like another world. I did everything I could to make that world come true. To escape my world.’

In all they had watched about 5,000 movies which were rented or bought cheaply.

Finally, one of the brothers escapes the home, and the clan is forced to readjust and begin taking their first steps into society.

Ms. Moselle told The New York Times: ‘It’s fascinating what the human spirit does when it’s confined. The downside to all the movies – and they have seen, like, 5,000 – is that there are certain formulas to them. Real life is different. In real life, the girl doesn’t always break your heart. The boys are still struggling to understand that.’

The children come across as a likable and intelligent group in the film, despite their unimaginably sheltered lives.

Their mother, Susanne, appears to have been controlled to the same extent that her children were.

She is described as former hippie from the Midwest who is both the provider and educator for the family. She met her husband on the trail to Machu Picchu.

Their father, Oscar, appears on briefly on camera. The Peruvian immigrant, who is devoted to Hare Krishna, appears caught in a struggle with paranoia and alcohol.

According to The Times, social services did have involvement at the home and the children have received some psychiatric treatment.

In the film, all the siblings can be seen struggling with resentment towards their father for the life they have been forced to lead.

Six of the siblings still live in the family’s Lower East Side apartment – only Govinda Angulo has let home.

Source: DailyMail