The Distant Barking of Dogs

Sunday, April 14 @ 2:00pm

Followed by Skype Q+A with Simon Lereng Wilmont (Director) & in-person with Julian Hayda (WBEZ)

Synopsis

Director: Simon Lereng Wilmont
90 min, 2017, Denmark/Sweden/Finland

Shortlisted for this year’s Academy Award and voted the Best Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where the jury called it “remarkable, exquisite, and unforgettable,” The Distant Barking of Dogs follows the travails of 10-year-old Oleg, a Ukrainian boy who lives a stone’s throw from the Russian-Ukrainian battlefront. Living with his loving babushka Alexandra and his younger cousin Yarik, this fractional family must navigate their survival as the rumbling sounds of mortar shells inches ever closer. They debate whether to flee or seek solace in their familiar surroundings. But how long is it safe to stay? A delicate and beautiful observational tour-de-force about life in wartime, this “touchingly intimate” (Screen Daily) and “impressive [film] invites universal empathy [and] “deftly weaves a precise coming-of-age narrative into its morally urgent anti-war tableau” (Variety).