Ana Katz's The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet is showing exclusively on MUBI in many countries starting January 21, 2022 in the series The New Auteurs.
Some of this film’s images have been with me for years. For example, people who move around in a squatting stance, a meteorite falling to Earth, or the crying of a dog. But, at some point, I needed to organize those images into this story; I was guided more by emotions and intuitive reflection rather than by the convention of how a script is written. Initially, the project was called “A film out of necessity.”
This experimental form would be unimaginable without a crew to share the quest with. The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet is a film that wouldn’t have existed without taking my intuition and the crew’s and actors’ intuition as a driver.
I wonder whether, given the world’s current situation of extreme deprivation and omnipresent audiovisual information, cinema may need a more intimate and mysterious way to communicate with spectators.
With what elements can cinema portray human life nowadays, in the midst of the deafening noise of the context, so that the urge to be alive is perceived as pulsing and full of meaning? Could it possibly be by using music, sketches, the trail that dreams leave behind? I don’t know. But I am sure that human stories are not “small.”
The dog is not even silent when he dies, it goes somewhere else, it reorganizes and returns and is always awaiting a transformation.
Drawings by art director Mariela Rípodas.