About the Film
Directed by Barb Lang
In 1995, the federal government reintroduced wolves to central Idaho. A few years later, then newly-opened Timberline High School, with the wolf as their mascot, officially adopted a local wolf pack. Then, in 2021, the pack and its eight pups were reported killed by federal agents.
The students refused to let it go quietly.
Timberline Pack pups playing with an aluminum can as captured by a wildlife cam on June 29, 2017.
CHILDREN OF THE WOLVES is an intimate coming-of-age documentary set inside one of America's most divisive wildlife conflicts. In 2021, Idaho passed a sweeping new law with one goal: fewer wolves in the state. A handful of students in Teens Restoring Earth's Environment, a club at Timberline High School, refused to stay quiet.
Ella Driever and Sasha Truax, both executive members of T.R.E.E., leading a meeting.
Ella gave speeches between softball practices. Sasha testified before the Fish and Game Commission the same year she qualified for climbing nationals. For Sanshray, an activist with the Sunrise Movement, the wolves were a doorway into the larger fight for the planet. All came from one school club with an enormous goal: Change the way Idaho manages its wolves. Along the way, they learned from experts like wolf biologist Carter Niemeyer, Jim Fredericks of Idaho Fish and Game, and members of the Nez Perce Tribe, and saw their first wild wolves in Yellowstone.
Sasha Truax speaking with local Native leader Dallas Gudgell after an Idaho Fish & Game Commissioners Meeting in Lewiston, Idaho on November 16, 2023.
Now, as Sasha, Ella, and Sanshray step into adulthood, they tell the story in their own words. As we follow them on their journeys, the wolves become the catalyst for something larger: young people discovering that their voices carry, and learning what it costs to use them.
Over the course of an unforgettable senior year, the filmmakers followed these students as they balanced the ordinary milestones of adolescence with an extraordinary commitment to protecting the wildlife they love.