Old Dog

Dir. Pema Tseden. 2010, 89 mins. China. DCP. In Tibetan and Chinese with English subtitles. With Lochey, Drolma Kyab, Tamdrin Tso. An elderly Tibetan shepherd lives with his son Gonbo and Gonbo’s wife, Rikso. They own an old Tibetan mastiff, a sheep-herding dog whose breed became a prized possession for Chinese buyers on the Chinese “mainland” (i.e. non-Tibetan China). Their own old dog is sold, recovered, resold, stolen, and recovered again, passing through the hands of a Chinese dealer, the local police, and Tibetan dog rustlers. Amidst relentlessly fenced-off Amdo grasslands and a decidedly unpicturesque village, the old shepherd struggles, to the best of his ability, to fend off everyone who sees his dog as a mere commodity. In what may be Pema Tseden’s darkest film, crises of identity and masculinity collide as vultures circle overhead.

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