Synopsis: After his father’s lambs are brutally slaughtered, an intellectual son returns to his widowed father’s remote shack, where he’s drawn into his father’s growing fear that the past is repeating itself.
There is a sacredness in death, if decay doesn’t discomfort you — if you know what it looks like. When Dogs Bark, beautifully shot in black and white and framed in a 4:3 aspect ratio, opens with a dead lamb, evoking the Agnus Dei. An apt symbol of sacrifice. Yet, unlike the gilded and refined religious depictions, this image is very real — with its rot and dirt and buzzing flies. A shepherd stands over his dead flock and prays: a quiet ritual of mourning. And he doesn’t turn away, but kneels to stroke the lamb’s head. Gentle. Tender. Unafraid and unashamed of his grief.
A text reads, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” from George Santayana. Timely words in an age when we have forgotten the past, burying histories in the dirt while petrifying others into stone memorials, repeating the cycle again and again. Perhaps, then, the question is: whose past?
Though this is a film about genocide by an Armenian, the protagonists are Greek. As the filmmaker Matthew Keisoglu explains, “When Dogs Bark is a genocide film for any nation that has heard the sound of marching soldiers, the barking of dogs searching for them and has unearthed the mass graves they left behind.” And so, it is also a reminder of the forgotten genocide and forced displacement of Greeks from the same scarred lands. This film is a testament to remembrance as an act of resilience, evolving from a personal and collaborative act for the filmmaker to a collective act for the audience.
Despite the careful use of set design and props, Keisoglu’s film carries a timelessness. With beautiful use of lighting, the cinematography doesn’t shy away from stark contrasts that bolden the gothic aesthetic of the film: an old house in a mountainous village, an axe by the door, the father’s eyes in the light, the son’s face in the dark. As if to say: I can see. You are still in the dark.
When the son offers a pomegranate, lamenting that, “It’s not as sweet. It’s not the same in the city,” he kisses it. Another quiet ritual. The sacred pomegranate, the scattered seeds of a people.
There are moments that break the fourth wall, directing the gaze at us, the audience. These moments provoke a question — an act of breaking through the tale and reaching out across space and time — reminding us that cinema is not just an escape, but a collective act of witnessing. The father, though speaking to his son, gazes into the camera, meeting our eyes, “I brought you here to listen. When they come for us again, listen.”
When the father sings in the dark night, the son glances at the camera, as if to ask: Do you hear it?
How much of this is real, and how much is gothic horror? Are they so different — or is it simply the way we tell the story or how many times it’s been told?
As he wails, his son holds him. To hold someone in grief, to want to help, to be there to ask: How can I stop this pain?
The father kisses the pomegranate and breaks it open. One half he slips into his jacket pocket, by his heart; the other he squeezes until the juice spills out. I can’t see the red, but I imagine it seeping into the soil. Bones — this time, human. Unburied skeletons. The son’s eyes follow abnormally large paw prints, “Dad, these are just large dogs; they’ve deluded you. Dad, just come with me to the city. I know that there’s more to us, more to all of us. We’re more than just bones in the ground.”
The pomegranate has been split: half held in the heart, half by the earth. He knows what’s coming, for him and for them. And his song, his love, calls to him. Before him lies an abyss. He walks into it.
When we finally meet the werewolf, it is subtle: a dark figure with shining eyes and long horns.
The son, left to battle alone, stares it down.
We faintly see its long teeth.
The axe is in the son’s hand.
Cut.
And then, the sounds of marching.
Watching this film, I thought about why I have always loved horror: because monsters felt more honest than the world itself. There is release in fighting demons on screen; the reality behind them is much uglier than fangs and shadowy figures. And in times of relentless slaughter, When Dogs Bark insists that we must face that abyss. See the wolves. Hear them howl. Remember. Witness. Recognize genocide. And deny the deniers.
To hold half a pomegranate to our heart, and an axe in our hand.
To mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living.
