Film inspired award winning filmmaker Christina Georgiou during time spent in shelter in Cyprus. The film is an ode to the 200 million voiceless strays around the world
(Commonwealth Union)_It has not yet been publicly released but this film has already held audiences spellbound at various film festivals worldwide including the Toronto Independent Film Festival, New York Independent Cinema Awards and the Hollywood International Golden Age Film Festival. Among the ten awards it has already won are the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival and the Best Filmmaker Award at the California Indies 2021.
Having always had a passion for dogs and being an avid animal welfare volunteer, Christina Georgiou whose film credits are impressive, honed in on the issue of the worst ever animal abandonment period in Cyprus, during the pandemic. With shelters bursting at the seams due to massive numbers of dogs being dumped by the wayside, she used her film-making talents to raise a two-pronged awareness – one on the plight of strays and two on the challenges faced by tireless volunteer animal rescuers.
“In a consumerist Western society where everything, including man’s best friend, is treated as disposable, everyday people helping stray dogs remind us what being human is all about,” she said in an interview with Cyprus Mail. “And the four main volunteers featured in the film have become a voice for the world’s 200,000,000 voiceless strays.”
The plight of stray dogs hit the spotlight for Georgiou when she found a dog with a dislocated jaw and rushed him to a shelter, seeing first-hand the amount of selfless work the volunteers were engaged in. This spurred her to volunteer and she began cleaning cages, buying food and walking the dogs. One day she was asked to help load dogs onto a truck and did so without knowing the reason. However, when she looked around and saw the volunteers in floods of tears, the dogs’ fate finally dawned on her. She cried without ceasing. It was then that she decided to make the film.
Georgio,u whose father is a vet and thus spent a childhood surrounded by animals, is a Doctor of Music and a Member of the European Film Academy. She has composed soundtracks for a number of films including Chinatown: The Three Shelters and Fish and Chips). Over the last seven years she has travelled from country to country using her insights especially on canines living on the street and been involved with hands-on rescue efforts. It was her time at the shelter in Cyprus that inspired her to start on this ‘dogumentary’.
The 94-minute film is due to premiere on the 3rd of November.
