Rat Film 15

Drawing comparisons to Werner Herzog and Chris Marker, Theo Anthony’s first feature combines inventive observation and a Dan Deacon soundtrack to create a powerful historical overview of the severe inequality in Baltimore.

Across walls, fences, and alleys, rats not only expose our boundaries of separation but make homes in them.  Unpacking the city’s influences - urban, social, racial - Rat Film uses the rat - as well as the humans that love them, live with them, and kill them - to show cities’ methods for keeping their unwanted elements under control. “There’s never been a rat problem in Baltimore, it’s always been a people problem”.                               

“Equal parts disturbing and humorous, informative and bizarre, Rat Film is a brilliantly imaginative and formally experimental essay on how Baltimore has dealt with its rat problem and manipulated its black population.”The New York Times