Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

Zimbabwe Year Zero. The first post-colonial election is imminent and Robert Mugabe is promising to return the land to the people. Which is disturbing news to white farmers like the Fullers, who tote guns the way we carry smart phones. Even eight-year-old Bobo (the astonishing Lexi Venter) wears a rifle strapped around her shoulder as she puffs on a cigarette and parrots her parents’ white supremacist assumptions. Embeth Daviditz, who plays Bobo’s mother, and adapted Alexandra Fuller’s memoir, directs as if the sky is falling down — the film has a high, nervous energy which is almost feverish. (Daviditz grew up in South Africa at the tail end of the apartheid era.)

The entire movie rests on the tiny shoulders and remarkably lifelike performance of Lexi Venter… It is a bold risk to put so much weight on a child’s work, but like so many of Davidtz’s choices here, it also turns out to be shrewd.

Caryn James, Hollywood Reporter

Even if you despise the Fullers on principle, “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” is an enthralling watch. There’s outrage underneath every offhand remark and heartbreak in watching this fraying community turn on each other. Bobo belongs in the pantheon of filmland’s savage moppets next to Aliens’ Newt and The Road Warrior’s Feral Kid. Those roles have become iconic, and yet first-time actor Venter runs circles around them.

Amy Nicholson, LA Times