The road to success is not easy. And the journey is even more difficult when you come to realize that the success you dreamed of is a reality incompatible with your dreams. ‘Hungry Like The Wolf‘ is a necessary short film for the times we live in, a kind of riposte to that wave of enthusiastic and idealistic youngsters who want to conquer the internet and the world in one night. While not focusing exclusively on the impact of social media, Kieran Dee is keenly aware of the existential crisis facing today’s younger generations, who aspire to fame as if it’s within everyone’s reach, while convincing themselves that success is the ultimate purpose of life. We are thus confronted with a reflection of our society, where the fleeting boundaries between appearance and substance blur, and the confusion brought on by life’s challenges becomes increasingly difficult to manage.
Cam and Adam dream of conquering the world with their music. But to what extent are their investment and expectations compatible with the “disenchanted” everyday reality that actually reveals the true essence of their friendship?
Although central, the theme of friendship is only a pretext through which the director illustrates not only the superficiality of present-day inter-human transactions, whose purpose is purely mercantile, but the very inability of people to know their true needs. The protagonist’s emotional failure encapsulates the broader crisis of an entire generation and reflects a deeper paradigm shift in a world where seeking validation from others takes precedence over honesty and self-awareness. We are talking about a short film with extremely high stakes, perhaps too high to be fully explored in a short film. Indeed, Kieran Dee does an extraordinary job, and this is evident not only in the complexity of the script and the excellent work of the actors, but also in the boldness and sophistication of the editing, which suggestively juggles several stylistic registers. And yet, the feeling that the potential of the whole concept is not fully explored persists. But this aspect is not a flaw, it is a certainty that ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’ is the embryo of a large-scale project that deserves the effort of being transformed into a mini-series or feature-length movie. Needless to add that, even in its current form, Kieran Dee’s project deserves all our appreciation.
For its narrative and technical complexity, as well as for the painful authenticity with which it exposes the existential crisis of a delusional generation, ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’ was awarded with the Film of the Month distinction in the August 2024 edition of TMFF.
