The Caterpillars that Teach Us Respect for People
In a report from Saguenay’s festival of short films, Italian film critic Marco Lombardi looks at the 18-minute-long winner of the FIPRESCI prize, and finds an “authentically political work” that has a happy ending.
The Wolf in this film is not Jordan Belfort from Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, and the setting is not New York’s Wall Street: we are in Mississauga, a town in Ontario near Toronto. The wolves of both films, however, are not so far apart: those in A Wolf in the Suburbs try to steal another kind of money—something called freedom—so their crusade appears just as criminal as that of the protagonist of The Wolf of Wall Street. This is, of course, hyperbole, since the film’s title borrows the name of its protagonist, who is in fact called Wolf Ruck; yet it is not entirely so, because the violence perpetrated by his neighbors is likewise carried out under the banner of presumed legality, just as in Scorsese’s film.
In this case, the abuse consists in forcing Wolf Ruck to cut the grass in his own yard, in compliance with a municipal regulation that would have it no higher than 20 cm. Our Wolf will not have it, and not only because those neatly squared lawns evoke the geometries of one of the many North American metropolises, whose “visual order” is the reverse shot of welcome, of true welcome, but rather because he—an ex-athlete as he is—has always lived by respect for life: starting with his own body and extending to the environment. Not cutting the grass in his yard, letting it become a small forest, therefore seems to him the only way to help the environment—an environment that is constantly violated by humankind. If we all did the same, perhaps we would live in a truer, healthier world. This is what Wolf Ruck has “cultivated” over the course of his entire existence.
Some sequences that capture the life flowing within that natural microcosm—from insects to vegetation—convey a Lynchian unease steeped in mystery, moving in the vicinity of Blue Velvet: It is a way to demonstrate the need to return to the authenticity of things, even if that truth—because it is unprocessed, that is, not sweetened—can seem monstrous to us and frighten us, as it puts us in direct contact with the rough side of existence. All that said, the film’s story is a true story, and a global one at that, which at times takes on the traits of magical realism, placing itself in a middle ground between documentary and fiction.
The truth of the protagonist—and the truth of his struggle—also emerges from very precise editing, which finds the right pacing of the story by combining certain archival images of Wolf Ruck with contemporary courtroom footage, all the way to an incredibly happy ending, given the direction of the world we live in. Justice in the name of good exists, the film’s director Amélie Hardy seems to tell us: you just have to go looking for it, with some effort, and at the price of dissent, which at times takes on the features of revolution. For this reason A Wolf in the Suburbs strikes me as a profoundly mature film, and as an authentically political work. A Wolf in the Suburbs in fact tells us something apparently childish yet truly profound: There is no need to proclaim the necessary respect for the weakest (perhaps bringing wars, dictatorships, and discrimination into it) in a way that sometimes seems more opportunistic and politically correct than sincere. Only respect for caterpillars and for wild plants, Amélie Hardy tells us, can teach us respect toward our fellow human beings. The deep kind, and the sincere kind. The kind that lasts—toward a life that is not orderly, but welcoming, and true.
Marco Lombardi
Edited by Robert Horton
© FIPRESCI 2026