CCFF 2025 – Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight & 40 Acres
Two films about family are showing this weekend at the CCFF (Chicago Critics Film Festival) at the Music Box Theatre. At first glance, “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” which played on Saturday, May 3rd, at 11:30 a.m., and “40 Acres,” which will be shown tonight at 9:30 p.m., may not have much in common, but both films feature a gun-toting matriarch who will protect her family farm the only way they know how. In each movie, it takes someone close to the mother to offer an alternate way of survival, for better or worse. Both films also mark their respective directors’ feature-length debut and were screened last year at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” (which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival) has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, and “40 Acres” should be released in July in the States; both of them fit nicely in the lineup here in Chicago.
Below are my thoughts on each…
DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT
Actress Embeth Davidtz (“Schindler’s List” and “The Morning Show”) makes her directorial debut with “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” an adaptation of British-Zimbabwean author Alexandra Fuller’s 2002 memoir of the same name, which partly reflects on her experience when her family lived on a South African farm in Rhodesia during a civil conflict that took place between 1964 and 1979. Davidtz’s adaptation takes place in 1979 and 1980 and follows 8-year-old Bobo (Fuller’s nickname, played by Lexi Venter) as we see the struggles within and around her family through her young perspective. She and her sister, Vanessa (Anina Reed), have been taught to be wary and mindful of their surroundings due to landmines and guerrillas who cross the border from Mozambique. Her parents, Nicola Fuller (played by Davidtz), an alcoholic who sleeps with a loaded machine gun, and Tim Fuller (Rob Van Vuuren), who goes on daily runs with the local police force. Two Africans, Sarah (Zikhona Bali) and Jacob (Fimani N. Shilubana), also reside on the farm, working for the Fuller family. Despite Jacob’s disapproval, Bobo can often be found shadowing Sarah during her daily tasks. After all, Bobo is quite the precocious rascal, usually giving kind-hearted Sarah a hard time and mimicking her mother’s unhealthy behavior, like smoking and drinking.
Considering Davidtz spent her childhood in South Africa, this feels like a personal passion project for her. She and cinematographer Willie Nel provide a ground-level lens that primarily maintains Bobo’s observant point of view, and the overall production design brings a believable lived-in aura to the farm where they live. We see the world through her eyes, whether she’s zooming around on her motor bike or crawling under the table with the family dogs. The young girl (portrayed impeccably by Venter despite her dialogue being difficult to follow at times) carries herself with a privilege she doesn’t yet understand as she takes in challenging situations for an adult to register. One gets the idea that there’s more to Bobo’s family’s story than what is being told here, but then again, Davidtz probably only focused on a specific timeframe from Fuller’s memoir.
RATING: ***
40 ACRES
After spending years directing episodic television shows (“Utopia Falls” and “The Porter”), Canadian writer/director R.T. Thorne makes his feature-length debut with “40 Acres”, a post-apocalyptic thriller which gives the always-great Danielle Deadwyler a significant lead role. She plays Hailey Freeman, the leader of a remote farm in a world that’s been ravaged by a pandemic that’s killed off animals and depleted essential resources, which leaves farmland as the last precious commodity. Before the devastation, Hailey had returned to the family farm as a war veteran, grateful to be reunited with her young son, Manny. In the aftermath, she has married Galen (Michael Greyeyes), a resourceful Indigenous man, and they have two daughters, Daine (Leenah Robinson) and Danis (Jaeda LeBlanc), all of whom reside on the Freeman farm, along with Manny (Kateem O’Connor), who’s now in his late teens. The family contributes to the physical requirements of maintaining a functional farm and is trained with lethal combat skills to defend their land.
Defend from whom, you may ask? Like any post-apocalyptic landscape, the biggest threat is other humans. While there are a few people that Hailey maintains radio communication with, such as Augusta Taylor (Elizabeth Saunders), who manages her own farm, the Freemans have fortified their farm with security fences and cameras to prevent any intruders from breaking in and taking over. Because of food scarcity, the greatest adversaries are cannibals, and due to a bad judgment call by Manny, in which he rescues an attractive young woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas), the entire Freeman family is now in jeopardy and must protect each other at all costs.
While I am here for the Daniell Deadwyler as Action Heroine and hope casting directors are watching her in this, I have to say I was slightly disappointed by the inclusion of the “teenager makes a stupid decision that endangers all” trope that’s prevalent in these movies (think “A Quiet Place”, which this movie resembles the most, except for the monsters). I wish Thorne had subverted our expectations in that area. Regardless, this movie really goes for it as a whole, with a brutal opening that sets the expectation that there’s no holding back when dispensing farm threats.
