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 internationally renowned filmmakers, and extremely popular with the home crowd. The Host (2006), Snowpiercer (2013) and Parasite (2019) rank among the highest-grossing films of all time at the Korean box office. Bong’s feature film debut was Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), and his international breakthrough came in 2003 with the crime thriller Memories of Murder, before Mother followed in 2009. His trademarks are a dark sense of humour, rapid mood shifts, and a strong visual style with keen attention to detail. At this year’s Films From the South, you can deep-dive into Bong’s filmography in a comprehensive retrospective.