Latest News: During the screening of “Dogs Are People Too”, actual dogs are invited to attend as well. Please keep this in mind If you are allergic to man’s best friend.
Dogs Are People Too: A four-legged civil rights movement
Director: Hendrik Faller
United Kingdom, United States, 2023, 86 min
Shooting Format:Digital
Festival Year:2024
Category:Documentary Feature
Cast:Amy Dejonghe, Chris Olson, Hal Herzog, Gary Francione, Joshua Morton, Roz Nenninger, Ken Savage, Daryll Lindsay, Nancy Brown, Jessica Pierce, Jessica Rubin, Diana Urban.
Crew:Producer: Tom Miller. Cinematography: Michael Lebor. Editing: Lexi Powner. Sound Design: Nico Metten.
Email:faller.hendrik@googlemail.com
Synopsis
Dogs Are People Too explores the four-legged civil rights movement sweeping across America. Dogs may soon be considered 'non-human persons', changing the human-dog bond forever.
Trailer
About the director
Hendrik Faller is Head of film at the London-based creative agency TCO London. He cut his teeth as an editor, working for clients such as Netflix, Adidas and Vice and now commercials and documentaries for outlets like Channel 4 in the UK, and for sports brands such as Reebok and Gore-Tex.
Hendrik's initial interest in film was in long form fiction. He made his first feature Mountain Fever in 2017. A micro-budget thriller, it premiered in the young film-makers category at renowned genre festival FrightFest.
That same year Hendrik took part in a workshop with German film-maker Werner Herzog, were he was inspired to continue making films in the documentary genre.
Hendrik sees Dogs People Are People Too as an opportunity to reach millions of dog-lovers and make them think about their pets in a completely different way, hoping that it will make us all question what our relationship with animals says about us.
Filmmaker's note
The beautiful thing about making a film about dogs in the USA is the sheer unfettered passion we encountered. From dog-lawyers to dog-cloners the love for these pets is rich and mulit-facetted - we had so many incredible characters that we had to leave the Hell's Angels on the cutting room floor! (ask my producer when you meet him at the bar)
In a country where 'man's best friend' is also legally speaking a piece of property with no more rights than a table or chair, we found that America's love for dogs is full of fascinating contradictions. With nearly 100 million dogs in the United States, these beloved four-legged friends/things were the perfect gateway drug to talking about our relationship with ALL animals. We'd never heard of the concept of non-human personhood before making this film… Honestly, we still don't have any answers, just a lot more questions!