Educational Media Reviews Online

This film consists of a series of stories from around the world about humans and their dogs. When I saw the title, I thought, okay, this will be about all the ways that dogs prove they are man’s best friend: therapy dogs, workings dogs, and so on. And most of it is like that. There are other parts, however, where the filmmaker seemed to lose his focus.

There is a segment, for instance, about a shepherd and his wife who live in a very rural area. They do have dogs to help herd the sheep, but the discussion centered on the people and their sorrow that their way of life may be passing into history. The dogs were barely mentioned. There is also a rather jarring segment from Vietnam that discusses their cultural norm of eating dog meat.

One might think that a film about dogs would be ideal for younger audiences, but I would hesitate to show this film to children. Not only might they find the Vietnam segment upsetting but there are also some rather graphic descriptions from war zones of man’s inhumanity to man.

Altogether, I was disappointed. It was a rambling collection of short stories that had not been stitched together very well. After watching this film, I felt depressed rather than uplifted.

This film is currently available on Kanopy and is available for EDU PPR, digital collections, and on DVD.

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