YNOT at the Movies

What happens when a child tries to make sense of a world unraveling around her? In "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" (South Africa 2024 | 98 min.), director Embeth Davidtz turns that question into a piercing and unforgettable debut. Adapted from Alexandra Fuller's acclaimed memoir, the film captures a young girl's experience of war, grief, and inherited prejudice with clarity and emotional precision. Told entirely from a child's point of view, it feels both intimate and unshakably true.

Set in Zimbabwe in 1980, as the country emerges from the violent aftermath of its war for independence, the film follows seven-year-old Bobo Fuller (Lexi Venter) on her family's crumbling Rhodesian farm. Her mother Nicola (Embeth Davidtz) is brittle and unwell, her father Tim (Rob van Vuuren) clings to a fading colonial order, and her older sister Vanessa (Anina Hope Reed) watches it all with guarded detachment. Caught in the whispered racism, untreated grief, and political upheaval, Bobo can't make sense of the world around her. But the family's Black housekeeper Sarah (Zikhona Bali) offers her stories, myths, and a different kind of truth. Through Bobo's confused but observant eyes, the film reveals a portrait of a country, a family, and a child shaped by a violence that is deeply felt but barely understood.

What makes the film remarkable is its commitment to Bobo's point of view. Her misunderstandings—some comic, some heartbreaking—become the vehicle through which colonial trauma, family dysfunction, and cultural transformation are revealed. Without ever spelling out its themes, the film allows Bobo's innocence to expose the harsh truths the adults around her refuse to face.

Lexi Venter, in her mesmerizing debut, is a revelation. With no trace of artifice or affectation, she delivers a performance of remarkable naturalism, infused with quiet humor, emotional depth, and an instinctive sense of truth. It's one of the most astonishing child performances in years. As Nicola, Embeth Davidtz is raw and complex—a mother who's both protective and dangerously unstable. Zikhona Bali illuminates the film with her gentle, soulful portrayal of Sarah, whose presence becomes increasingly central as Bobo begins to see beyond her inherited worldview.

Embeth Davidtz's direction is precise and deeply personal. Drawing from her own South African childhood experience, she handles the material with emotional clarity and historical honesty, refusing to simplify either the characters or their contradictions.

Cinematographer Willie Nel impressively captures the sharp light and dry dust of Zimbabwe with unforced beauty, balancing sweeping shots of the land's vastness with intimate, tightly framed glimpses of Bobo's inner world. The contrast mirrors the tension between a country in flux and a child's private reckoning within it.

Through the eyes of a child raised in a broken system, the film shows how the personal and political become inseparable, and how understanding begins when inherited narratives start to crack. "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" is not a coming-of-age tale in the traditional sense, it's a confrontation with legacy. Through the narrow lens of a child, it paints a vast canvas of colonialism, displacement, and identity.

"Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" opens in theaters on Friday, July 18, 2025.