Coming soon to assault everything you hold dear—actually, coming to the Cinematheque, starting Thursday (July 23)—The Tribe arrives as surely the most brutal and shocking film of 2015.

Set in a boarding school for the deaf, in a part of Ukraine that could use a meltdown to brighten things up a bit, Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s multiple-award winner comes on like an evil, frostbitten mix of A Clockwork Orange and If...., but with a central gimmick that somehow makes the experience even more pummelling: the all-deaf cast performs in Ukrainian sign language, minus subtitles.

Deprived of this essential form of connection (even silent movies had title cards, for God’s sake), we can only guess at any character’s motivation. This puts a lot of emphasis on Slaboshpitsky’s casting, and especially lead actor Grigoriy Fesenko’s inscrutably blank face.

We’re equally anxious for any reassurance that these people are actually performing, that the graphic sex, violence, and other extremes of behaviour that we’re seeing aren’t real.

Reached in Kiev when The Tribe played Vancouver’s Rio Grind film festival last October, Slaboshpitsky told the Straight about the film’s painstaking casting process, explaining that there would have been no Tribe at all without the diplomatic assistance of Ukraine’s Deaf Cultural Centre.

“The fact is that deaf people are pretty isolated and distrustful towards others in our country,” he said. Still, after a year, 300-plus auditions, and a sufficient amount of trust-building, filming finally commenced in a bleak “proletarian district” known to the locals as “Stalinka”.

“Most of the shooting took place in my old school,” Slaboshpitsky said. “Deaf kids [back then] came to play in our football playground. Often we fought each other. But I still remember how I was fascinated, watching the deaf communicate with each other in sign language. And since I already knew in my childhood that I would become a filmmaker, we can say that the idea was born then.”

Slaboshpitsky’s other big move was to introduce his cast to the works of Lars von Trier, Larry Clark, François Truffaut, Abel Ferrara, and the Romanian new wave. “For them, deaf teenagers, it was absolutely a new world, as they watched before only entertaining movies, blockbusters, and comedies,” Slaboshpitsky said. “They learned that cinema could be different.”

As for his leads, The Tribe called for a remarkable lack of inhibition. Not a problem for Fesenko, the filmmaker said.

“For him to play in a sex scene is a demonstration of prowess. He’s a risky guy. He is a graffiti artist, parkourist, roofer. Despite my ban, he participated in Maidan [Kiev’s central square] street fights.”

Costar Yana Novikova was another matter. “She came to us from the small town of Gomel in Belarus, and she was slightly conservative,” Slaboshpitsky said. He settled Novikova’s apprehensions about nudity with a screening of Blue Is the Warmest Colour. Ultimately, she became The Tribe’s greatest advocate. “She was the only one out of the entire crew who really believed we will be in Cannes,” he said.

Novikova’s faith was answered in May with three prizes at the most prestigious of festivals (although not the Palme d’Or, alas). More importantly, The Tribe became an unexpected hit in its home country, allowing a once-silent community to emerge from its isolation.

“They consider that as a victory of deaf society,” its proud auteur said.