WHO LET THE DOG OUT?

Film: Dog on Trial (Le Procès du chien) In this weekly column, the writer introduces you to powerful cinema from across the world

- NAMRATA JOSHI

RENCH-Swiss actress Laetitia Dosch's directorial debut, Dog on Trial, struck a chord not just because yours truly happens to be a dog lover, addicted to watching cute and emotional canine reels on social media, but the human-animal conflict at its core is the stuff of our contemporary urban Indian reality as well.

Although set in Switzerland, Dosch's film presents this evidently universal discord at its most absurd. Loosely inspired by a real-life legal proceeding in France against a dog who had been repeatedly biting strangers, it has Dosch herself playing the lead, lawyer Avril Lucciani, who has a knack for taking up hopeless causes. While victory in a case remains elusive, a partially sighted client, Dariuch Michovski (Francois Damiens), reaches out to her for defending his best friend and faithful companion, Cosmos (dog Kodi), whose life is at stake in the first canine trial since the Middle Ages. Avril has to rise up to the challenge or else Cosmos, having already bitten people three times, is liable to be put to sleep as per the country's law. As Avril says in the film, "everyone was fascinated by the case but nobody knew what to think".