(La casa lobo, Joaquín Cociña, Cristóbal León, Chile/Germany 2018, 75 min., DCP, Spanish and German with English subtitles)
Perhaps the most innovative usage of stop motion animation in the 2010s, The Wolf House creatively explores the disturbing true story of the Colonia Dignidad, a German cult in Chile that did the dirty work of brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet. The film creates its own cinematic language through life-size puppets, paper mache, and impressively mobile camerawork. The film is simultaneously unnerving and poetic as it moves through the haunted rooms of an abandoned colony and the characters undergo transformations that remind one of the darkest of fairytales. As stop motion has become a far less popular technique in the era of CGI, films like The Wolf House prove that the technique is an artform all its own, with limitless potential.