A documentary about the stray dogs of Istanbul is practically irresistible to us, as no doubt our cinephile friend knew when he recommended it to us. This film is quite short and has no narration at all so it really is all about experiencing the streets of this ancient city through the eyes of its dogs, focusing on three of them in particular. There are no great insights or even much information to be gained here but it does make for a fascinating and immersive sensory experience especially if you are a dog-person.
The camera follows three dogs in Istanbul: two adults Zeytin and Nazar, plus a puppy Kartal who appears a little later. While ostensibly free to wander the streets, the dogs are regularly cared for by a group of young Syrian refugees. The young men sleep rough, in construction sites and abandoned buildings or the streets themselves, but still take the time to look after and feed the dogs. Accompanying the images are quotes praising dogs, mainly from the Greek philosopher Diogenes who was a founder of the Cynicism school. There is no narration but the film does capture plenty of incidental dialogue from the many people who happen to be around the dogs and this reveals something about life in Istanbul. Almost everyone is very kind towards the dogs, to an astonishing degree perhaps to us here in Malaysia, and the only real distress they experience in here is when they wander into the territory of another pack of dogs and get into fights.
With its low camera angles and willingness to show humans only in passing, the film takes its commitment to showing a dog’s eye-view of the city seriously. Director Elizabeth Lo is perfectly happy to have the camera linger on a dog for long moments to capture its expressions and body language. That is really great for us dog lovers but I can see how non-dog people may not get much out of this film. It goes without saying that Istanbul is a beautiful city and these particular dogs mostly seem to hang out in the well-known tourist areas. This means that many of these locations are readily recognizable and practically guarantees amazing shots. At the same time, I appreciate how the director includes shots of not so pretty things including the broken down buildings the refugees squat in and the worn blankets the dogs sleep in right next to them. The film even has a shot of a dog taking a dump on the grass, prompting some Chinese tourists to tease the dog to hilarious effect.
As beautiful as the film is, it is fair to critique it as being kind of shallow. It is remarkable that Elizabeth Lo, who I believe is Chinese American, was able to shoot this in Turkey, and it is a testament to how much patience it must have taken to win the trust of these dogs. But she is herself an outsider in Istanbul and sometimes comes across as a tourist being fascinated by everything she sees around her without really engaging with the people or the dogs or trying to intervene in their fates. At the end of this documentary you don’t even end up learning more about the legal status of stray dogs in Istanbul or other parts of Turkey or even what happens to these three particular dogs. You might say the same of many of the shots of the dogs themselves. Fun as it is for us dog enthusiasts to watch them, they’re also not actually doing anything we haven’t seen thousands of times already.
Anyway this is clearly a labor of love from a director who loves dogs and I’d still recommend it. But it’s best to calibrate your expectations appropriately and understand this isn’t a documentary about conveying information but about seeing the world through the eyes of a few dogs.