At the beginning of the 20th century, on the island of La Réunion, five adolescents of good families enamoured with the occult, commit a savage crime. A Dutch Captain takes them in charge for a repressive cruise on a haunted, dilapidated sailboat. Exhausted by the Captain’s methods, the five boys prepare to mutiny. Their port of call is a supernatural island with luxuriant vegetation and bewitching powers that holds a disturbing secret.

Notoriously provocative, French experimental artist Bertrand Mandico has finally delivered his debut feature film. Some might be quick to suggest Mandico’s similarities with Guy Maddin due to his new film’s whacked-out narrative, alienating use of studio sets, and brusquely outré acting.  Mandico’s regular cinematographer, Pascale Granel, creates black-and-white photography that is textured like an overexposed silent film and at the same time adds poignant colour sequences that push the limits of bizarreness a little further. Finally, Elina Löwensohn, Mandico’s muse and the lead in most of his shorts (and widely known from Hal Hartley’s films), delivers one of her most captivating recent performances.

"Wild Boys is highly pleasurable both as an hyper-crafted aesthetic object and as a sweetly dirty-minded erotic fantasia" Film of the Week, Film Comment