Discipline and Punish: Theo Anthony’s Documentary Essays / RAT FILM

Director: Theo Anthony, USA, 2016, 82 min, ENG + ENG subtitles

They creep through walls, fences and alleyways, rendering visible the barriers we choose erect to set ourselves apart from each other. What’s more: they’ve nestled in them. Rat Film is a provocative documentary that follows rats – as well as the people who love them, live side by side with them, or toil to exterminate them – to probe the history of Baltimore. “There ain’t never been a rat problem in Baltimore, it’s always been a people problem,” says a local rodent controller. This urban essay by director Theo Anthony, notably influenced by the filmic language of the internet and video age, is a loose blend of archival material, maps and city plans with recorded portraits of members of excluded communities, drawing attention to the history of social and racial segregation whose results are palpable in today’s torn American society. His film is a precisely constructed study, an accusation, and last but not least a formally innovative artwork.