The face and voice of a young Syrian fighter. The left half of his face is in deep shadow. We hear a story, still glowing with the remembrance of an interrogation at which he was consulted as a specialist. His words and sentences are delivered haltingly, gravely. The first sentence, after he has collected himself smoking, head bowed and eyes closed: “I killed.” He is convinced that the man he shot at the end of the interrogation was innocent. But the ten men who were present at the interrogation had already pre-condemned the suspect, just wanted their judgement legitimised. What should have been an ordinary assignment became within a few long minutes a test of the young man’s humanity, which he feels he has failed. This is the failure that “Of God and Dogs” examines as it swells to a great filmic requiem: unreconciled, masterful, despairing.
Ralph Eue