Dir/Wris: Elsa Kremser, Levin Peter | Doc 77′
A wonderful dreamy opening with a classical score glides is thought the night streets of Moscow, a dog called Dingo looking wistfully out of the windows of a car. And then we are in the midst of a flowery meadow. And Dingo is nursing a leg wound.
A close knit family of stray dogs and the homeless keep themselves going in the urban wastelands just south of Moscow. A post industrial web of factories has gradually ground to a semi-halt. Where once machinery whirled at peak production the pace has slowed, and the stream of workers who kept the stray dogs alive with regular titbits has now dwindled to a bare handful: one woman called Nadja and seven dogs.
Shot from the animals’ point of view a co-dependency blurs as these two species live in close proximity, each lending the other succour and sustenance, emotional and physical. Snow gradually arrives to chill this union of souls in the bleak midwinter but the two continue to protect each other against the biting cold giving the old woman something to live for in her fight for survival. But Nadja is also desperate to free herself from this modus vivendi and become independent and her struggle eventually culminates in a parting of the ways.
Austria’s Elsa Kremser and Germany’s Levin Peter made their first appearance on the arthouse scene with their 2019 debut Space Dogs, another cinematic riff that explored Moscow’s canine world through a magical story of Russia’s first space bound dog (Laika) returning to Earth as a ghost. Dreaming Dogs is resolutely land-based but there’s a spiritual dimension in this union of souls that elevates the film to a timeless essay that explores man – or woman – and a best friend who has adapted itself over the centuries as a method of survival. The directors accompanied the group over a period of three years that saw woman and beast survive in a minimalist existence against a background of financial collapse and societal crisis. @MeredithTaylor
VIENNALE FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | 17-27 October 2024