Misha et les loups

Wow. Amazing story, within a story of a story.

A great documentary with twists, turns and tumbles. Watch it without googling anything about it first.. then google yourself into the wee hours after. Brilliant docco.

Misha and the Wolves (2021) was written and directed by Sam Hobkinson.

The Misha in the title is Misha Defonseca, who tells the harrowing story of of her childhood during the Holocaust. She tell about leaving her home and walking through the woods. During this terrible time, she is helped by a pack of wolves.

What happens next is the plot of the film. This is a movie definitely worth seeing. However, if you read the reviews of critics or watch the trailer, you'll lose some of the enjoyment of the film. My suggestion is to rent it, watch it, and then see what others have written.

This movie has a weak IMDb rating of 6.7. I thought that it was much better than that, and rated it 8.

Misha and the Wolves takes a while to get going, a long while. And toward the middle, it really bogs down. But the last 20-30 minutes are a decent payoff.

If this documentary were edited better, and if we lost the 20-30 minutes of people staring at the camera and making faces, it would have been so much better.

This could have been a stellar 40-50 minute piece. Instead, it felt very stretched out and felt time-wastingly slow.

I had to stop halfway through and check in with the friend who recommended it to me. He told me the twist at the end was worth it, and it was.

I still recommend watching it, but I'd recommend multitasking for the first 50-60 minutes.

The one thing I will give this documentary is that it was unexpected. There were a few 'bombshell' moments that I did not see coming, and were handled very well by the film makers. The story was unique, the people interviewed relevant, and the storyline flowed well. Not a perfect doc, but conveyed a strong message and for the most part kept neutral.

There's a nice mystery story here to discover if you've never heard of it, so go in blind. It's made very by the book, but when you have a story with so many twists, you don't have to get fancy. Solid work, worth seeing once.