Barking Dogs Never Bite

An indolent university lecturer living off his pregnant wife’s salary sits at home, idly wondering how to rustle up the bribe that will buy him a professorship. But the constant yapping of a small dog somewhere in the apartment building drives him crazy; he prowls the corridors with murder in his eyes…

Through the interwoven stories of the lecturer, his wife, the pet loving girl from the neighbourhood office, and the janitor with a taste for dog stew, Bong builds a microcosm of Korean society which feels so believable it seems rash to call it satire. Beneath the mix of daily routines, ghost stories, deluded characters and pet rescues lurks a social analysis as savage as anything by Pasolini.

Tromsø International Film Festival

Read Montages' review of Barking Dogs Never Bite here (in Norwegian).

Director Bong Joon-ho will give a personal video greeting to Films from the South before the film.

Director

Bong Joon-ho (b. 1969) is one of South Korea's most renowned international and domestic filmmakers. The Host (2006), the English-language Snowpiercer (2013), and the Oscar-winning Parasite (2019) are among the most-watched films in South Korea ever. Bong made his feature film debut with Barking Dogs Never Bite in 2000 and gained widespread recognition with the crime thriller Memories of Murder in 2003, followed by Mother in 2009.