Japanese filmmaker Akane Yamada makes movies about domestic animals, often those caught up in disaster situations. She did one about the pets that were abandoned or otherwise unhoused following the Tohoku earthquake of 2011, and apparently received pushback from people who thought that she should be focusing on the human victims of the tragedy. Some will undoubtedly say the same thing about her latest doc, which uses the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a jumping off point to talk about animals during wartime. The point would seem to be that there is really no shortage of movies, especially documentaries, that follow the sufferings of people caught up in war and disasters, but many domesticated animals, as well as wild animals, suffer as well under such circumstances, and if we, as humans, value our humanity, then that suffering should be addressed as well.

Yamada has spent time on-and-off in Ukraine and Poland for the last three years covering how various groups and individuals have tried to help “dogs on the battlefield.” Many are pets whose owners have been displaced or even killed. Some are in shelters that already existed when the war started. But quite a few are strays that are, nevertheless, members of the communities where they live, fed and cared for by people who just think of them as neighbors. This aspect is cultural, and not necessarily strictly Ukrainian, but it does point up how broad the relationship between domesticated animals and humans can be. At one point she observes Ukrainian soldiers recovering from their wounds in a facility. They are visited by so-called therapy dogs, which they play with in an unself-conscious way. One soldier says that even when they are on the front lines, they encounter stray dogs that befriend them, because, in a very real way, they are all in this together and can actually comfort each other. A former British soldier who suffers from PTSD is profiled. He found that his interactions with dogs and cats after he came back from Aghanistan helped him to recover his mental equilibrium, and now he goes to war-torn areas to help save animals. He was in Ukraine and now, apparently, he is in Gaza. 

Much of Yamada’s footage seems to have been shot by other people—members of NGOs and private citizens in Ukraine and Poland who care about animals and are trying to do something. She collects this footage and some, such as cell phone recordings of two animal shelter operators who are cut off from their shelter due to war-related destruction, is very disturbing. It takes nothing away from the human suffering in war to look at the suffering of animals, which are just as innocent as civilians; more so, if you think they don’t have the capacity to wage war. 

In Japanese, Ukrainian, Russian and English. Now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011).

Dogs and War home page in Japanese

photo (c) Inu to Senso Seisaku Iinkai