HAIR WOLF (2018)

This week we’re highlighting short works from filmmakers that had movies at SXSW 2022.

Writer/director Miriama Diallo’s MASTER got a lot of buzz when it played Sundance earlier this year, eventually being picked up by Amazon Studios. Seeing it at SXSW, I found Diallo’s feature film debut to have some clunkiness around the horror plotting, but the filmmaker did a great job with her cast and lots of tremendous visuals.

Those elements of strong performances and engaging visual language is on display in her short HAIR WOLF, which I saw at SXSW in 2018 (and it also played Sundance that year, too).

Diallo uses the same DP, Charlotte Hornsby, for both projects and MASTER and HAIR WOLF both concern larger social issues—particularly showing inverse situations (and implications) of how folks react to when the Other attempts to “invade” white and Black spaces, respectively.

There is more humor (however dark) in HAIR WOLF than MASTER, but it remains a strong interweaving of theme, style, and story.

(Also there is more than a bit of this short, that was…erm…“homaged” in the 2020 film VAMPIRES VS. THE BRONX; especially the opening scene of that Netflix feature.)

The plot summary is as follows:

In a black hair salon in gentrifying Brooklyn, the local residents fend off a strange new monster: white women intent on sucking the lifeblood from black culture…

You can learn more about Diallo’s process making the short, including her inspiration and challenges she faced, by reading this post. Enjoy HAIR WOLF and you can currently watch MASTER now on Amazon Prime Video.