Now Playing at AFS: Stories About What Haunts Us

Certain on-screen narratives can help us confront the murkier parts of being human. When thought-provoking depictions of seemingly inexplicable behavior are presented with curiosity and empathy, the results can feel both fascinating and appropriately disturbing. The AFS virtual cinema currently features two movies that, while completely different in genre and tone, both exemplify this kind of filmmaking.

SPACE DOGS

(2020) dir. Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter

Space Dogs spends a significant amount of its runtime at eye-level with the notably resilient street dogs of Moscow. One of their kind, Laika, was sent into space—and to her death—by the Russian government in 1957. The opening of the film describes how her body burned up while being pulled back into Earth’s atmosphere. She is now a ghost that hangs over Moscow, reflecting a shameful aspect of how humans have exploited animals like her.

By portraying the dogs as though they are among them, the filmmakers effectively convey the brutality of their existence and their varying dynamics with people in the city. Visceral moments like the dogs killing a stray cat and fighting each other are juxtaposed with tender moments like humans and dogs sharing dumpster spoils. The dogs’ existence among humans is always conditional, which is why people were willing to expose Laika and others like her to deadly circumstances to accelerate space exploration. 

The film’s sparse narration briefly ponders what the dogs sent into space may have been dreaming. The lack of this kind of questioning on a larger scale indicates that the dogs were essentially treated as emotionless subjects. In several archival clips that are quite difficult to watch, dogs are poked, prodded, tested, and shoved into devices that scare them to see how they would fare beyond our atmosphere. As lost as humans were in beginning to explore space, they still showed no consideration for what they were putting animals through to make “progress.” When it goes beyond the purely conceptual, the idea that certain living things are simply expendable at the hands of others resonates as inherently violent. 

The beauty of the film lies in its curiosity about the interiority of every animal portrayed. A performing chimpanzee traveling with handlers is cinematically presented like a musician on tour. The camera is patient as it follows turtles calmy traversing wet roads near the woods. While the narration covers stories of other chimpanzees and turtles being sent into space by entitled humans, the visuals embrace the individuality of these beings. Each one demonstrates a full range of emotion—including constant fear of what humans might do next.

There is a story in the film about a nightingale that tries to warn innocent puppies in the wild about the dangers of human contact. Before the message resonates, someone places poisoned food in the puppy den and kills them. Given that the animals in the film are essentially the protagonists, it’s tragic that our heroes can’t work together to help themselves. Undercurrents of human arrogance and ambivalence make this film something that will sit with audiences in necessarily uncomfortable ways.

I held my own dog tightly while watching this movie, especially during a sequence that shows how the dogs that came back from the cosmos were forcefully bred to make “cosmic children.” Their puppies were trophies given to celebrities as high-visibility reassurance that space travel was safe. The nature of that reassurance made me question whether or not I take my dog’s love and loyalty for granted while centering my own comfort. This is a complicated question, but after watching Space Dogs I feel like I have a more nuanced perspective on it and the tools to engage with my dog more empathetically. For anyone with animals in their lives, this will be an intense but revelatory watch.

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SIBYL

(2019) dir. Justine Triet

What transpires in Sibyl is comedic, erotic, suspenseful, and fittingly absurd. The titular character struggles after leaving her psychotherapy practice to go back to writing—her original calling. At first, it seems as though her writing voice is summoning her. As the film progresses, however, it becomes clear that Sibyl’s reasoning for making this career change is much more complicated and steeped in various forms of heartbreak.

Writing is a renewed addiction that will hopefully help Sibyl stave off more overtly destructive ones. She celebrates her passion for putting words on the page in AA meetings when, in reality, she is intimidated by the blank page and consequently overindulging in the life of a patient with real-life drama. As expected, ethical lines are quickly and repeatedly blurred in service of Sibyl needing a story.

Therapy and writing both involve different forms of being responsible with people’s experiences. The idea of mining interactions in therapy for fiction material makes sense because creative instincts also seem helpful in a therapist’s conscious shepherding of personal narratives. Each session is potentially a new chapter in someone’s story.

Sibyl is fast-paced, funny, somewhat disturbing, and awkward in ways that echo the tone of films like the beautifully chaotic Force Majeure. It deftly explores the myriad ways in which its main character—a successful, outspoken woman with a complex history—falls apart. Overall, it feels like a consistently tense chase film in which a woman is trying to both outrun and tame her own impulses.