Hungarian thriller is Homeward Bound meets Rise of The Planet of The Apes
Hot on the heels of news that someone at Paramount decided that Transformers 4 should be an Academy Awards nomination-contender comes the first trailer for another outside the box Oscar submission: Hungary’s entry into the Best Foreign Language Film pool, White God – the story of a girl, a dog… and a revolution.
The story, at first, seems to tread familiar animal-adventure ground: Hagen, an ordinary dog, is trying to get back to his owner after she is forced to abandon him upon being sent to live with her pet-unfriendly father. But this is no mere Lassie Come Home update – it’s a dark parable for racial unrest and class conflict, with a plot that inches toward outright sci-fi allegory. In the world of the film, the local government is attempting to ethnically-purify dog breeds by imposing harsh taxes on the ownership of mixed-breed “mutts” like Hagen, forcing them out into the streets and into the pounds. As Hagen struggles to return home, he inspires his fellow mutts to full-scale violent revolution against the “mongrel”-hating human authorities – call it Rise of The Planet of The Dogs.
Directed by Hungary’s Kornel Mundruczo, White Dog was met with largely positive reviews on the festival circuit earlier this year, and is scheduled for a March 27th bow in U.S. theaters regardless of how it fares at Oscar time. The film’s title, incidentally, is believed to be a play on White Dog, Samuel Fuller’s infamous 1982 shocker about a woman who discovers that her otherwise gentle-souled new pooch is actually a vicious attack dog trained by racists to attack and kill black people on sight.
Source: Magnolia Pictures
