Marrakech Film Festival 2024: The Wolves Always Come at Night

A seamless blend of fiction and documentary filmmaking, director Gabrielle Brady’s The Wolves Always Come at Night focuses on a displaced Mongolian family who are forced to leave the Gobi desert for the capital city of Ulaanbaatar when half of their livestock is killed in a violent sandstorm. Incorporating gorgeous imagery and a loving affection towards the family’s traditional way of life, Brady’s film provides an insightful look at how the effects of climate change have impacted the lives of real people.

Although the events on screen have been dramatised, Davaa and Zaha’s story is nevertheless a true one. After meeting and filming the couple in the city’s ger district, the production then moved out into the countryside to recreate the events that led them to relocate. This hybrid approach allows the feature to have all the polish of a scripted drama while maintaining its authenticity. Nowhere is this better seen than in the interactions between the family members: whether it’s the parents settling their children at night or the couple quietly reassuring each other that everything will be okay, the love they share is felt in every scene they’re together.

The retrospective approach to shooting the opening half likewise allows for some wonderful moments of visual storytelling, which characterise the open wilderness of the desert as a place of freedom, a theme which becomes a recurring motif throughout the picture. No scene is as affecting, though, as when the herder finds the remains of their flock in the aftermath of the sandstorm. Presented in complete silence, the discovery comes as a devastating blow.

Removed from the vast expanses of the countryside, life in the city’s outskirts is drastically different from what the family is used to. Instead of enjoying nature, the family now stay in a polluted shantytown with others who have similar stories. The roaming horses have been replaced with registration forms, and the patriarch gets a job at a mining company where he finds it difficult to destroy the land that he holds so dearly.

The Wolves Always Come at Night is a love letter to a traditional Mongolian way of life and a message about climate change. Above all, though, Brady’s docudrama is a moving tale about family and endurance.

Andrew Murray

The Wolves Always Come at Night does not have a release date yet.