Fumani N. Shilubana

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dog’s Tonight is a very poignant and authentic reveal of the complexity of race relations and ethnicity in an emerging democracy in Zimbabwe. This very compelling first feature from actor-turned-director Embeth Davidtz is told from the perspective of Bobo, the eight-year-old daughter of White farmers who must leave the beloved land that their colonizing forebears have occupied for generations.

One critical decision for all narratives involves selecting a point of view, either adopting a single character’s perspective or choosing an omnipotent, more objective approach. Anchoring a story in one individual’s limited point-of-view can encourage invested, complex involvement in events as that privileged character communicates first-person incidents. This holds true for director/star Embeth Davidtz’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. Told through eight-year-old girl Bobo’s eyes, the alternating between Black Rhodesians’ versus white farmers’ lives, prejudices, and struggles reveals and intensifies pervasive racist attitudes through an appealing, naïve, questioning character as she discovers the human costs of her colonial world.