Freedoms are not always guaranteed. 

“Freedom for the Wolf” tells the story of five countries and different social movements. From Hong Kong, Tunisia, India, Japan and the United States, it looks at movements on all sorts of scales and how the government fights back.

The movie’s title comes from a quote by philosopher Isaiah Berlin about democracy in crisis: “Freedom for the wolves have often meant death to the sheep.”

The film is visually striking and thematically impactful.

The graphic design, editing and how the stories are stitched together creates an appealing and illustrative take on democracy, freedom, police states, censorship and more. There are examples of the power of student organization as a way to disrupt the public and encourage change. There are examples of rap as a form of resistance. There are examples of censorship for YouTubers and podcast comedians. There are examples of the police state in the United States. There are examples straight out of the town in “Footloose” where dancing was banned in an area in Japan.

This film shows so many frustrating things that it makes the viewer so angry at the world at times, but it also evokes empowerment in that there is hope, there is strength in numbers, there is something we as the “sheep” can do. And that action is happening all over the world.

“This is an overwhelming film in so many different ways, it crosses borders, it’s set in various corners of the world, not just here in the United States,” said moderator and communications studies professor, David Scott Diffrient. “And I felt angry, but I also felt weirdly hopeful as well just by virtue of seeing some of the protest movements around the world.”

After the screening, there was a talk with the two film producers, Camilla Hall and Patrick Hamm.

Well, for me, one of the biggest takeaways from the film is to just not take for granted the status quo. The freedoms that we have we have to fight for them, even though we may think they’re guaranteed in some way, they’re not.” -Camilla Hall, producer of “Freedom for the Wolf”

One thing discussed was the ending of the film. The film ends with footage of women’s marches across the world that happened after President Trump was elected. As this footage is played, the audio is of one of Trump’s speeches. The contrast of Trump’s message to the people played on top of film of protest essentially against him was ridiculously impactful, giving the audience a sense of pure “woah.” And it almost didn’t make it in the film.

“There was an early version of this film that we had finished in the early fall of 2016 just prior to the U.S. election,” Hamm said. “And at that point we were planning to pitch it as ‘this could happen in America’ and weeks later it did. And then we went out and reshot the ending.”

The film itself was an experience to say the least for the filmmakers in all they had to overcome and endure to make it happen and share it with the world.

“(Freedom for the Wolf) is the product of a long journey,” Hamm said. “We took over three years to film it. There were various times when we thought this film would never be finished, in part because we got detained, and tear gassed and arrested again, and so it’s been quite the journey.”

Freedom is something precious that this film focuses on. It takes a look at the illusion of democracy, illiberal democracy, consumer freedom and more. It looks at how these show up in different parts of the world and the impact they have.

“Well, for me, one of the biggest takeaways from the film is to just not take for granted the status quo,” Hall said. “The freedoms that we have we have to fight for them, even though we may think they’re guaranteed in some way, they’re not.”

Encore screening:

Thursday, April 12 6:30 p.m.

The Lyric

Collegian reporter Maddie Wright can be reached at entertainment@collegian.com or on Twitter @maddierwright.