Lek and the Dogs

When four-year-old Ivan Mishukov runs away from home, he is taken in by a pack of wild dogs that take care of him on the streets of Moscow. It is only two years later that he ends up in an orphanage, where he records his experiences on cassettes. In his eyes, the world of humans, worn down by recession, is a place of violence and depravity, whereas the dogs gave him warmth, closeness and protection. The two years he spent with them will have a dramatic impact on his emotional life and his ability to cope with the human world. Hattie Naylor wrote the drama Lek and the Dogs based on Ivan's cassettes. In a darker, visionary adaptation by British eccentric Andrew Kottig, Ivan becomes Lek, played by French actor Xavier Tchili. The topos of a wild child unspoiled by civilization is juxtaposed against raw, dark images of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Drifting over the apocalyptic landscape is the spirit of Tarkovsky's Stalker and Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. An unforgettable work by an uncompromising artist.