Huge pack of stray dogs in Hungarian film wows Cannes

Director Kornel Mundruczo is licked by a dog during a photocall for the film "Feher isten" (White God) in competition for the category "Un Certain Regard" at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes May 17, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]

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A professional animal plays the role of Hagen, but most of the dogs which form a pack of strays that ends up terrorizing the city, were rescued from a pound.

Filming them was like working with four- or five-year-old child actors, but he got what he wanted, Mundruczo said.

"There are really harsh and heavy scenes which were simulated by playing," he said, speaking of how the dogs were prepared for filming.

The film, which shows the abandoned Hagen joining the strays and becoming their leader, includes scenes in which the cross-breed dogs are hounded by dogcatchers and ignored, abused and exploited by humans.

There is a theme running through the film of mistreatment of "the underdog", which in Mundruczo's way of seeing things could be poor people in Hungary, or anywhere in Europe.

"It's a hard criticism of Europe in my eyes because through this melodrama, or through this story of how a little girl tried to find her dog, you understand a metaphor of all minorities, of all poor people," he said.

The film's strays, however, have gone on to happier hunting grounds than the muddy building sites and abandoned buildings where they are shown living in the film.

Mundruczo said that when word spread after filming that the dogs were available for adoption "we found families for them".

People were delighted, he said, to find "they can adopt film star dogs".