A dog is the big star of the Sitges Festival

SilosThe big star of this year's Sitges Festival is Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever who, unfortunately, didn't make it to the festival. "He stayed at my parents' house and is very happy playing with their dog," explains Ben Leonberg, the director of Good boy. Indy, of course, is his dog, who appears in almost every scene of a film that subverts the conventions of horror cinema by adopting the point of view of the typical quisso who, in these films, smells from an hour away that there is something evil in the basement or a spirit running around the attic. In Good boyIndy senses a supernatural presence that threatens his master and is consuming his health, but he has no way of telling him. Through his worried gaze, his alert expression, or his perked ears, we read all the emotions of an animal: loyalty, helplessness, anguish, and, above all, the fear of losing what you love most.

Leonberg, who plays the dog's owner, wanted to film only with Indy, and not with three or four similar dogs, as is usually done for efficiency. In exchange for working only with his dog, the shoot had to be extended to more than 400 days spread over three years. "It's because of his attention span, which is very short," Leonberg explains. "After a while, it's not worth the effort. You can barely shoot one scene per day, so I would prepare everything during the day and we would shoot it at night, when my wife got home from work," he adds.

It must be said that Indy doesn't have many action scenes, but he does have a rather magnetic gaze. And Good boy He films his actions through an immersive device, which allows us to perceive the canine perspective down to its final consequences. The human faces are almost always off-screen. Contemplating the world in this way gives the film a certain air of a sensory experiment. "That was an aesthetic decision, but also a practical one," explains the director. "On the one hand, because the person behind the plan is me, and I don't know how to act. I could have found an actor and given instructions to Indy, but it wouldn't have worked. On the other hand, sticking to the dog's point of view is what makes the way Indy gets from one place to another so awkward, because he's not interested in what the humans are saying and doesn't pay attention, so some of the dialogue is incomplete," he concludes.