Dogs of God, the Latvian animation that follows the award-winning phenomenon Flo, continues to roar loudly after its successful debut at Tribeca and continues to bow at more than 30 festivals, including Sitges and Tallinn’s Black Nights.
Berlin-based Media Move has signed deals for its “Monty Pythonesque” animated picture with Little Dream Pictures for Germany and Weird Wave for Greece, following major sales to Cartuna for North America and ESC Films for French-speaking countries. Little Dream Pictures will release this picture under the label Animation Addicts.
Dogs of God, the only Baltic film to compete for the European Film Award in both the European Film and Animation categories, “further deepens the conversation of film festivals and awards and is generating a lot of interest in specialized markets,” said Justyna Koronkiewicz of Media Move, which is currently negotiating rights in Japan, Poland, Latin America and South Korea. “Audiences are looking for something fresh and elevated with new genres and styles. We’ve seen how indie distributors let down their guard with groundbreaking films like ‘The Hundred of Beavers,’ and now they’re taking a chance on a niche but devoted fan base with bold content. We’re thrilled that all distributors are committed to bringing ‘Dogs of God’ to theaters,” Koronkiewicz said. US launch via Cartuna is scheduled for Q2 of 2026.
The polar opposite of Gintz Zilbarodis’ animated family film Flow, Dog of God is a horror comedy aimed at adults. Directed by Latvian brothers Lauris and Laitis Abele, who share screenwriting credits with Ivo Briedis and Harjis Grundmanis, the rotoscoped animation is described by Variety as “a boundary-pushing blend of savage satire and parabolic fantasy set in a grim 17th-century village where sacred objects are often desecrated, and vice versa.” Abele’s third son Marcis is the director of photography.
The story centers on an 80-year-old self-proclaimed werewolf called Dog of God, who appears at the trial of a woman on charges of witchcraft with a mysterious gift, a devil’s orb. “His arrival sets off an unexpected chain of events that culminates in a wild sexual rave party that turns the village into a frenzy of unleashed desire,” the logline continues.
Speaking to Variety after a screening of the picture in Tallinn Black Nights’ Midnight Shivers, New York Film Academy graduate and clinical psychology graduate Rightis Abele said he got the idea to animate Ivo Briedis’ first story after working on Flow as production coordinator, “because my brother Lauris was doing philosophy and I couldn’t do the same.”
“Ivo approached us because of our previous doc, The Baltic Tribes, Europe’s Last Pagans. We tried doing it in live action first, but finding the tone, the angles, and of course the money was very difficult. After spending a year helping the creators of Flow put together an animation team, I came up with the idea of using animation to drive the world and themes of the film,” says Leitis.
The second key moment is post-COVID-19, when filmmakers have access to a special recovery fund for experimental films. “It gave me the freedom to be creative because I didn’t mind being experimental.”
european genre forum
Afterwards, the Abele brothers attended the European Genre Forum, including the finale of the workshop in Tallinn. “Our leaders said your audience is adult anime, you don’t have to hold anything back. That audience has been watching Japanese anime from the ’90s, which means they’re ready to do anything,” Leitis recalls. Encouraged to “go wild”, the Abele Brothers decided to stick to a certain framework and stay close to their Baltic roots.
“We wanted to stick to the pagan culture of the Baltic states, and in this film, all the naughty elements are directly inspired by traditional folk music. We then extended the story of a 17th-century court trial with werewolves and added “fairy-tale-like characters and magician spells.”
For Rightis, this photo featuring a priest possessed by flagella is not anti-religion but anti-authority, whatever its form. “We are against the exercise of power. We do not oppose it when class society is natural. But every class gets messed up at some point. When the order becomes too strict, it needs to be challenged. In Latvia, we have lived under Soviet occupation, but since our independence[in1991]we have seen all the advantages of living in a democracy. We know its meaning and value.”
Laitis said the Latvian-American picture, which he made for less than 1 million euros ($1.1 million) with Christer Pudan for Tritone Studios, in addition to support from the Latvian National Film Center, has found himself a white knight for American indie producer Giovanni Labadessa of Lumiere Lab. Impressed by the Latvian filmmaker’s 2021 film Troubled Minds, the Los Angeles-based producer helped raise financing.
oscar campaign
“We’re all working hard on the Oscar campaign right now,” Rightis said. His younger brother, Loris, was flying to the United States (at the time of writing) with a chaga mushroom body skin care product he had given to AMPAS members as a special gift from Latvia in his bag. “These are not psychedelic mushrooms, they are medicinal mushrooms with healing properties. I hope Lauris can use them to get through customs safely!” joked Rightis, who hopes to ride on the momentum of “Flow” to advance to the next Oscar finalist for best international feature on December 16th.
“Flow” put Latvian and Baltic cinema on the world stage, but Gintz’s film also opened the door for animated films from all walks of life outside of Pixar and Disney, he said.
The brothers’ next work is the live-action film “Wagner and Satan”, which depicts the formative period of the German composer in the Latvian capital. “It’s going to be a very Faustian drama, a thriller full of paganism and occultism,” Lytis vows.
