The Wolf Knife

Directed by Laurel Nakadate | 100 minutes | 18+

6:30pm, Saturday, 1 March | Buy Tickets | Buy Day Pass

“We had fun though, didn’t we? We had a good time.”

Two Floridian teenagers, 16-year-old Chrissy (Christina Kolozsvary) and Jude (Julie Potratz), embark on a road trip to Tennessee to find Chrissy’s father. Along the way, the girls lie and confess long held secrets whilst navigating sexual rivalries, jealousy, and the struggle for autonomy.

Conjuring an atmosphere thick with menace, video artist Laurel Nakadate’s second feature is shot with a grimy, lo-fi aesthetic that turns naive and youthful delights—ice-cream by the beach, patterned leggings, friendly ass shaking—into eerie reminders of an innocence soon spoiled. In dank motel rooms, carparks, and tourist traps, Chrissy and Jude encounter a world of adult desires and simmering violence that incites disgust and yearning at once, testing the girls’ trust in each other and the goodness of those around them.

“There is an almost tragi-comical tension between this ferocious, innocent need and the perversity of the human culture/character through which it must come; it is a tension that at some point, and repeatedly, will become anguished.” - Mary Gaitskill on THE WOLF KNIFE