In this adaptation of Alexandra Fuller's memoir, actor-director Embeth Davidtz examines the collapse of colonialism through the eyes of eight-year-old Bobo as Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) approaches its pivotal 1980 election, marking the end of white rule.
From Schindler’s List to The Amazing Spider-Man, Matilda to The Morning Show, American actor Embeth Davidtz has earned a reputation as an engaging, relatable on-screen presence in some of Hollywood’s biggest films and series. But Davidtz’s roots are in South Africa, where she spent her youth. Just as that nation and neighbouring Zimbabwe were going through convulsive political change driven by a rejection of previous racial hierarchies, Davidtz was becoming an actor.
In her first film as both actor and director, she adapts Alexandra Fuller’s memoir of life in a white farming family in the last days of Rhodesia’s government. As the 1980 election that would create Zimbabwe approaches, the brittle truce between white landowners and the Black majority workers fractures.
Davidtz plays Nicola Fuller, mother to young, perceptive Bobo (Lexi Venter). Nicola sleeps with a machine gun, ready to use it for “terrorists” or snakes, whatever threatens her family. She’s taught her daughter that any African could be a terrorist.
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight shifts with admirable nuance from the coarse nihilism of the white adults who know their days of relative comfort are numbered, to the magic seen through Bobo’s innocent eyes, to the razor-sharp long view of Sarah (Zikhona Bali) and Jacob (Fumani N. Shilubana) who work for the Fuller family until they can reclaim land that was taken from them.
No one emerges as an unblemished hero in Davidtz’s film, nor is anyone an absolute villain. Even in this harsh, most intimate of conflicts, people have their reasons.
Content advisory: sexual violence, homophobic/racist/transphobic language
Screenings
Scotiabank 2
Scotiabank 6
Roy Thomson Hall
Scotiabank 1
TIFF Lightbox 2