Two stray dogs are the protagonists in Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff’s documentary set in a Santiago skate park.
Originally, Perut and Osnovikoff’s project was going to be devoted to the skaters at Los Reyes skate park in Santiago, Chile. But, once at the skate park, they found themselves following street dogs Chola and Football instead, who eventually became the film’s stars and even determined how filming was organized.
With the camera placed at dog eye level for most of the time, the space of the skate park is explored through their daily routes and habits. The dogs act as the cartographers of Los Reyes, with the human world removed to the periphery and represented only by fragments of bodies caught in the frame and teenagers’ conversations about growing up, the future, and social instability.
Avoiding anthropomorphism or “cutification,” the filmmakers don’t try to make the dogs’ world more relatable for humans. On the contrary, extended observation and close-ups only emphasize their otherness and inscrutability. The lives of Chola and Football unfold in a rhythm of repeated actions, and this rhythm makes manifest the process of the dogs’ ageing; the fragility and deterioration of animal bodies.
The film premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2018, where it won the Special Jury Award.
The film will be screened in Spanish with Russian subtitles.
Los Reyes
Directors: Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff
Chile, Germany. 2018. 78 min.
18+