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NOVEMBER 18 & 19
Some mobs may be disorderly, but, like the Gambino family, the eastern gray kangaroos who comprise the mob of Jan Aldenhoven and Glen Carruthers’ documentary are highly organized. The females spend their lives in a continuous cycle of caring for their young, while the males devote all of their time to kicking and boxing their way up the mob’s hierarchy (for good reason: Top roo gets to mate with all the females). The filmmakers spent two years with this particular mob, and not only did they come to recognize the roos by face (hence the film’s title), they also seem to have become attached to their subjects. The narrator’s frequent criticism of one female who has lost eight of her young to various predators seems needlessly judgmental until the roo’s ninth, still wobbly on the powerful springs that are his hind legs, is abandoned during a cattle-inspired panic, left alone for a night, and suffers an unspeakable fate. Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m. at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Ring Auditorium, 8th & Independence Ave. SW. FREE. (202) 357-2700. (Alona Wartofsky)