All About My Dog

The film is built from short stories about dogs. The stories link together and make a whole. The frame belongs to an advertising man called Kentaro Yamada. Yamada is a timid sort, and he is working on a dog food campaign. The job sends him back into his own childhood. As a boy he had a Shiba called Pochi. The memories keep interrupting the campaign. One segment imagines the talk dogs have among themselves. In another a pug named Coro falls for a Pomeranian named Lily. A further story follows a girl called Mika and her dog Marimo. Each piece moves at its own pitch, some of them funny and some of them sore. What they share is not ownership but time spent together. The dogs here are characters rather than decoration. The film gathers up the things people forget to say to them. Seven different directors shot the segments, among them Akira Nagai, Isshin Inudo and Shinsuke Sato. Shido Nakamura and Aoi Miyazaki appear in the ninety six minute film, a Japanese production by seven directors finished in 2005.