Project Detail

Lek and the Dogs

Synopsis

Experimental artist and auteur Andrew Kotting creates a groundbreaking crossover between narrative film and contemporary art piece, based on the award-winning play by Hattie Naylor. The film is inspired by the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who walked out of his Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs. In the recession-ravaged city, Ivan’s human world was dominated by deprivation and violence; his only hope was to turn to feral dogs for company, protection and warmth. Kotting’s spellbinding and utterly original story of survival conjures the streets of Moscow in the 1990s through the eyes of a child, drawing on a range of innovative modes and techniques to produce a montage essay on the state of the world.
Official Selection Rotterdam International Film Festival 2018 - International premiere

Details

Year
2017
Type of film
Features
Running time
92 mins
Format
Mixed
Director
Andrew Kötting
Producer
Nick Taussig, Paul Van Carter
Executive Producer
Lizzie Francke, Ian Berg, Christopher J Reynolds
Editor
Andrew Kotting
Screenwriter
Hattie Naylor (play), Andrew Kötting (script)
Director of Photography
Nick Gordon Smith
Sound
Nick Gordon Smith, Andrew Kotting
Music
Jem Finer
Principal cast
Xavier Tchili, Clay Barnard, Catherine Tchili, Sarah Lloyd, Antonia Beamish, Alan Moore

Production Status

Production Company

Salon Pictures

Unit 5B Rudolf Place
Miles Street
London
SW8 1RP

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Year: 2025

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The Whalebone Box The Whalebone Box

Director: Andrew Kotting

Year: 2019

A box made of whale bone, entangled in a fisherman’s net was washed up on a remote beach in the Outer Hebrides. Once touched the box can change lives. <br /> The box was given to Iain Sinclair almost thirty years ago by Steve Dilworth, a sculptor based on the Island of Harris. It was always intended to be an active thing, kill or cure. An animal battery. And part of the power of the crafted box comes from its lack of signature. At best this object has the anonymity and moral authority of tribal art, of a fetish, a relic or an accidental survivor. It is dangerous. What is inside might produce good magic or it might produce bad magic but like the box that contained Schrödinger’s Cat it must never to be opened.<br /> In 2018 the box was taken on an 800 mile reverse pilgrimage from London back to the Isle of Harris, in the company of the filmmaker Andrew Kötting, the photographer Anonymous Bosch and the writer Iain Sinclair. There was unwellness on the island and they hoped that the box might help, however little did they know the delirium that they would unleash. <br /> And all the while Eden Kötting narrates the story, working as both muse and soothsayer. She tries to make sense of the journey as it unfolds, sometimes awake and sometimes in deep sleep. Ultimately the whalebone box is finally buried in the sand on the very beach from which it came all those ever-so-many years ago BUT something happens at the very end of the film after the credits have finished rolling, something extraordinary and miraculous….<br /> Official Selection FID Marseilles 2019 - World premiere