Essential Viewing: “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” is Now in Cinemas Nationwide

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
Director and Writer: Embeth Davidtz
Producer: Helena Spring, Paul Buys, Embeth Davidtz, Anele Mdoda, Frankie Du Toit, and Trevor Noah
Starring: Embeth Davidtz, Zikhona Bali, Illana Cilliers, Andreas Damm, Lexi Venter
Genre: Drama
Language: English and Shona
Runtime: 98 mins
Rating: R (Violent/Bloody Images|Language|Some Underage Smoking/Drinking|Sexual Assault)

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is finally making its way to South African cinemas after glowing reviews at the Toronto Film Festival. Embeth Davidtz directs this adaptation of Alexandra Fuller’s fierce memoir of the same name tells the story of a bush war and restless love. The film lands for audiences everywhere, ready to listen and dream beyond old borders and heal old hurts at the door. Here’s what you need to know.

What is Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight about?

Set against the stark and shifting landscapes of 1970s Rhodesia, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight follows the coming-of-age tale of young Bobo growing up during the final years of the Rhodesian Bush War. As her family clings to their farm and the remnants of colonial life, Bobo navigates a world of deep contradictions — one filled with mud, rifles, warmth, and silence.

Her father patrols the fences with a gun; her mother, haunted by personal tragedy, drinks to forget. With danger edging ever closer and the political ground changing beneath their feet, Bobo learns to question the world she inherits. When war gives way to independence and the family must leave everything behind, she discovers that home is not a place — it’s a memory carried forward, fierce and unshakable.

Raw, tender, and laced with dark humour, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is a deeply personal portrait of childhood in a collapsing world.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight film in Johannesburg | What's on in Joburg

Alexandra Fuller’s memoir comes to life

Alexandra Fuller was born in England yet made in Rhodesian dust. Her family drifted from farm to farm chasing work while bush war redrew the horizon. She wrote Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight in 2001, which reviewers compared with Doris Lessing, though Fuller spoke in her own quick cadence. The book sold in millions and two sequels followed, yet the first volume still strikes like a match lighting colonial guilt, family grie,f and childlike wonder.

Actress and director Embeth Davidtz needs no introduction. The siren moved from Indiana to Grahamstown at nine, and took Shakespeare to the Market Theatre stage. Steven Spielberg cast her as Helen Hirsch in Schindler’s List. Many leading roles followed in Army of Darkness, Matilda, Junebug, Mad Men and Ray Donovan. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight marks Embeth’s first feature as director. She also plays Nicola Fuller, a woman whose humour swims against the tides of sorrow.