Documentary sensation Wolfpack opens Hong Kong Sundance festival

The six fraternal cinephiles known as The Wolfpack entered the Beacon Theatre in New York earlier this year for a reunion screening of Goodfellas. The film was one of the young men's favourites, and they were excited to watch it on the big screen with some of the cast members present.

"We've seen it hundreds of times, maybe more," says Bhagavan Angulo, 23, the oldest brother, a low-key personality.

"It's like sometimes, OK, our mum is making a big Italian dinner? Let's do Goodfellas," says Mukunda Angulo, 20, the fourth-oldest and one of the most outgoing.

A moment later he pauses and looks around at the stately confines of the Beacon, to which none of the brothers had ever been. "This place is very Goodfellas."

"Doing" movies has been a long-time tradition for the Angulos, who grew up in a housing development on New York's Lower East Side with a rural Midwestern mother and a South American-born father who converted to Hare Krishna.

In The Wolfpack, a documentary about the family, audiences are exposed to this colourful group through a movie that is likely to intrigue and raise questions in equal measure. Made in relative anonymity by the first-time director Crystal Moselle, The Wolfpack arrived at the Sundance Film Festival in January and became an instant sensation, a popular audience ticket that also nabbed the Grand Jury Prize for US documentary. With its captivating premise, the film also landed a deal from Magnolia Pictures.