Dogs feature film by Romanian director Bogdan Mirică, a crime thriller set in a benighted corner of Romania, won FIPRESCI’s jury vote for best picture in this year’s Un Certain Regard.
“A promising first feature that skillfully mixes crime and western genres, giving us insight into conflicts of contemporary Romania,” the critics jury motivated its choice of Dogs.
“Mirică’s debut feature belongs to a tradition of cynical, almost nihilistic crime thrillers in which a relatively petty motive can leave dozens lying in pools of their own blood. Though we experience the film through the eyes of a naïve outsider, Roman (Dragoș Bucur), who leaves the law and order of the city to tend to an inheritance issue, the first shot — in which flies buzz ominously as the camera tracks through nettles and weeds to a stagnant pool of water, the calm surface of which is disturbed first by bubbles and then the shocking appearance of a severed human foot — promises something far more sinister just beneath the surface of this rural grassland,” reads a review of the film by Variety.com.
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The domestic premiere of the film is set on September 23, 2016.