At the center of Sam Hobkinson’s stirring documentary Misha and the Wolves is a beautiful story of youthful resilience: a 7-year old girl in Nazi-occupied Belgium trying to find her parents is taken in by a wolf pack. Through German forests, she evades and searches for her captive mother and father, the pack helping the young girl to survive both the elements and the Nazis that lay in her path. 

At the behest of a pushy publisher, this dramatic tale turns from dinner party anecdote to a powerful memoir (and eventual best seller) but a feud between the autobiographer (Misha Defonseca) and her publisher (Jane Daniel) reveals a deeper deception, one that is shocking, tragic, and all too painful for all parties involved. 

Through a series of interviews, recreations, and archival footage, Hobkinson tests the veracity of Misha’s story and as truth threatens to be a tale stranger than fiction, the page quickly turns, leaving us to wonder: or is it?

Misha and the Wolves dives into the long and storied history of Misha’s story, from how it transformed from a sympathetic story into a minor memoir into a massive lawsuit into a best-selling powerhouse into a feature film. Along the way, the veracity of it all comes into question and Hobkinson employs a cast of international characters to help unravel what is real, what is fiction, and what is the gray area that exists between the two. 

As a globe-trotting mystery, Misha and the Wolves keeps audiences guessing, never quite certain as to how this twisty puzzle will unfold. A colorful ensemble of interviewees (mostly women) dissect not just Misha and her story but what it means to be a survivor, to search for objective truth, and to live in the aftermath of unknowable tragedy. 

A powerful and captivating documentary, Misha and the Wolves blurs the lines between truth and storytelling itself, using recreations and reenactments in interesting ways that poke at its center questions about perceptive and challenge the viewer’s ability to draw distinction between reality and, well, not-quite-reality. 

CONCLUSION: This globe-trotting caper is a tale that’s stranger than fiction, perhaps because it just might be, and director Sam Hobkinson manages to weave the tale of a Holocaust survivor who lived with wolves into an entertaining and meaningful exploration of truth and autobiography.

B+

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