Presented by VTIFF
Host Sponsor: Main Street Landing
Directed by Matteo Garonne
Italy/France | 2019 | Fiction | 102 mins | Italian w/English subtitles | Cannes Film Festival 2019
Film Source: Magnolia Pictures
Synopsis: In a seaside village on the outskirts of an Italian city, where the only law seems to be survival of the fittest, Marcello is a slight, mild-mannered man who divides his days between working at his modest dog grooming salon, caring for his daughter Alida, and being coerced into the petty criminal schemes of the local bully Simoncino, an ex-boxer who terrorizes the neighborhood. When Simoncino’s abuse finally brings Marcello to a breaking point, he decides to stand up for his own dignity through an act of vengeance, with unintended consequences.
Director’s note: “Dogman,[…] is not simply a film about vengeance, even if vengeance (or better yet, redemption) plays an important role, just as it’s also not solely a variation on the (eternal) theme of the struggle between weak and strong. Instead, it’s a film that, despite having an “extreme” story, puts forward something that concerns all of us: the consequences of the daily choices we make in order to survive, of the yesses that we say which bring us to no longer being able to say no, to the difference between who we are and who we believe we are.”
In the press:“…one of the best Italian films of recent times, a modern day neo-realist fable that bears comparison with the great work of Fellini, Rossellini, De Sica et al.” ~ The Independent