Stray

A cel­e­brat­ed direc­tor of doc­u­men­tary shorts, Eliz­a­beth Lo makes a com­pelling leap to fea­tures with Stray, a con­cise ethno­graph­ic film that’s pre­sent­ed from a non­hu­man per­spec­tive. Filmed most­ly in Istan­bul between 2017 and 2019, with an occa­sion­al detour to slight­ly fur­ther afield, the film uses the city’s inter­est­ing and com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry with stray dogs as a means to explore life on the periph­eries of human soci­ety, free of sta­tus and security.

The Turk­ish state has attempt­ed wide­spread anni­hi­la­tion of stray dogs since the 1900s, result­ing in mass killings of the street dog pop­u­la­tion. But while cam­paigns to dri­ve non-pet dogs from towns and cities still gain a lit­tle trac­tion now and again, wide­spread protests against these killings have allowed Turkey to become one of the only coun­tries where it’s cur­rent­ly ille­gal to euthanise or hold cap­tive any dog with­out an appar­ent own­er. Mean­while, dogs that don’t appear to be a human’s prop­er­ty are inte­grat­ed into the fab­ric of urban exis­tence with rel­a­tive­ly min­i­mal backlash.

Aside from one mem­o­rable sequence in which a GoPro is strapped to the back of a canine, Stray was filmed entire­ly by Lo as she fol­lowed a num­ber of street dogs across Istan­bul in areas both heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed or in dis­ar­ray due to redevelopment.

An enter­tain­ing mak­ing-of doc could be assem­bled had any col­lab­o­ra­tor hap­pened to film her from afar dur­ing its mak­ing; crouch­ing while walk­ing to cap­ture the dogs’ nat­ur­al behav­iour in crowd­ed places, includ­ing a women’s march protest at one point, par­tic­u­lar­ly so as not to influ­ence the ani­mals’ response in giv­en sit­u­a­tions or anthro­po­mor­phise them in any way.

Since two years’ worth of trips to Istan­bul have been con­densed into a 72-minute run­time, it’s like­ly Lo had at least some footage where she inter­act­ed with her dog sub­jects beyond just trail­ing them, par­tic­u­lar­ly if some showed resis­tance to being fol­lowed. Her most fre­quent­ly fea­tured stars are a pup­py named Kar­tal and two old­er dogs named Nazar and Zeytin, with the lat­ter hav­ing the most screen time and act­ing as the most cru­cial guide through the streets of Istanbul.

Sem­blances of a nar­ra­tive struc­ture or ​‘sto­ry­lines’ are defined by where Zeytin wan­ders or lingers – get­ting into stand­offs with oth­er stray or domes­ti­cat­ed dogs, catch­ing snip­pets of sociopo­lit­i­cal or roman­tic con­ver­sa­tions from passers-by, or run­ning into some recur­ring human pres­ences who inter­act with the dog and its occa­sion­al com­pan­ions with com­pas­sion, in con­trast to some others.

These pres­ences include con­struc­tion work­ers who dish up meals for local strays to feast on, but also, in the most sig­nif­i­cant plot strand of sorts, a trio of Syr­i­an refugees who’ve been home­less in the city for over a year, who find des­per­ate­ly need­ed com­fort and affec­tion in their repeat encoun­ters with Zeytin, Nazar and Kar­tal on the oth­er­wise uncar­ing streets.

The film’s title takes on a dual lay­er with these young people’s heart­break­ing plight, though Lo cer­tain­ly doesn’t blud­geon home her com­men­tary on either the mar­gin­alised or wider per­cep­tions of valid cit­i­zen­ship with her footage as it has been col­lect­ed and edited.