“Dog of God,” Latvia’s second-in-a-row animated Oscar contender after the winning phenomenon “Flow,” continues to bark out loud after its successful launch at Tribeca and follow up bow at 30-plus festivals, including Sitges and Tallinn’s Black Night.
After major sales to Cartuna for North America and ESC Films for French-speaking territories, Berlin-based Media Move has clinched deals on the ‘Monty Pythonesque’ animation pic with Little Dream Pictures for Germany and Weird Wave for Greece. Little Dream Pictures will release the pic under its label Animation Addicts.
The only Baltic pic vying for the European Film Awards, both in the best European Film and animation categories, “Dog of God” is “building on its festival and awards buzz, and attracting a lot of interest in the specialised market,” said Media Move’s Justyna Koronkiewicz, currently negotiating rights for Japan, Poland, Latin-America and Korea. “Audiences want something fresh, elevated, in new genres and styles. We’ve seen with an innovative movie like ‘Hundreds of Beavers,’ how indie distributors took their guard down; now they take their chances with daring content, betting on a niche but devoted fan base. We’re extremely happy that all our distributors have committed to a theatrical release with ‘Dog of God,’” said Koronkiewicz. The U.S. launch via Cartuna is slated for second quarter 2026.
Popular on Variety
A polar opposite to Gints Zilbalodis’s family animated pic “Flow,” “Dog of God” is an adult-focused horror comedy. Directed by Latvian brothers Lauris Ābele and Raitis Ābele who share the writing credit with Ivo Briedis and Harijs Grundmanis, the rotoscoped animation was depicted in Variety as “an envelope-pushing mix of savage satire and parabolic fantasy, set in a miserable 17th-century village where the sacred is frequently profane, and vice versa.” The third Ābele brother Marcis serves as cinematographer.
The story centres on an 80-year-old self-proclaimed werewolf called The Dog of God who turns up at a woman’s trial for witchcraft with a mysterious gift: the Devil’s Balls. “His arrival triggers a chain of unexpected events that climax” in a wild sexual rave party, transforming the village into a frenzy of unleashed desires,” runs the logline.
Speaking to Variety after the pic’s screening at Tallinn Black Nights’ Midnight Shivers, New-York Film Academy alumnus Raitis Ābele who graduated in clinical psychology “because my brother Lauris did philosophy and I couldn’t do the same,” said he got the idea to turn Ivo Briedis’ initial story into animation after working on “Flow” as production coordinator.
“Ivo approached us because of our previous doc ‘Baltic Tribes, Last Pagans of Europe.’ We first tried to make it in live action. But it was super hard to find the tone, the angle and the money of course. After spending a year helping the “Flow” creators put their animation team together, I had the idea to use animation to push the film’s universe and themes,” says Raitis.
A second pivotal moment was post-COVID, when the filmmakers could tap into a special recovery fund for experimental films. “We felt free to unleash our creativity as it was O.K. to be experimental.”
European Genre Forum
The Ābele brothers then attended the European Genre Forum, including the workshop’s finale in Tallinn. “Our mentors said, your audience is adult animation, don’t hold anything back. That audience has seen Japanese animation from the ‘90s, which means they are ready for anything,” Raitis recalls. Encouraged “to go wild”, the Ābele Bros decided to stick to a specific frame and stay close to their Baltic roots.
“We wanted to stick to our Baltic pagan culture and in the film, all the naughty stuff are directly inspired by traditional folk songs. Then we widened the story of a court trial in the 17th century with a werewolf and added ‘fairy-tale like characters and magician spells.”
For Raitis, the pic, which features a flagellation-obsessed cleric, is not anti-religion but anti-authority, whatever its shape. “We are against the use of power. We’re not against a hierarchical society when it’s natural. But every hierarchy fucks up at some point. When order becomes too strict, it needs to be challenged. In Latvia, we’ve lived under Soviet occupation, and since gaining independence [in 1991], we’ve seen all the benefits of living in a democracy. We know its meaning and value.”
Raitis said besides support from the National Film Centre of Latvia, the Latvian-U.S pic which he produced with Kristele Pudane for Tritone Studio for less than €1 million ($1.1 million), found a white knight in U.S. indie producer Giovanni Labadessa of Lumiere Lab. Impressed by the Latvian filmmakers’ 2021 “Troubled Minds,”, the L.A.-based producer helped them lock the financing.
Oscar campaign
“Now we’re all working hard on the Oscar campaign,” said Raitis whose brother Lauris – at press time – was flying to the U.S., with a special Latvian present in his bags to AMPAS members: Chaga mushroom body skincare. “These aren’t psychedelic but medicinal mushrooms with healing powers. I hope Lauris will make it through customs with them!”, quipped Raitis who hopes to build on the “Flow” momentum and make it to the next round of Oscar short-listing for best international feature Dec. 16.
“Flow” has propelled Latvian – and Baltic cinema – onto the global stage but Gints’ film has also opened the doors to the full spectrum of animated pics outside Pixar and Disney,” he said.
Next up for the brothers is the live action pic “Wagner and Satan” about the German composer’s formative years in the Latvian capital. “It will be a thriller full of paganism, occultism, a true Faustian drama,” pledges Raitis.