Conversations with Pets
2015 · 3m · New Zealand
Directed by Justin Hawkes
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, whimsical
Animal communicator Faye Rogers shares the conversations she says she has with the animals around her.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A straight documentary about talking to animals should be unbearable—and yet Hawkes commits so fully to Faye's sincere weirdness that it becomes genuinely disarming, which is exactly the kind of subversion that works when you're not trying.
The film sits comfortably in the observational documentary tradition but doesn't interrogate its own credulity; it's a portrait built on gentle acceptance rather than the formal rigor that would elevate this premise into something more complex.
The entire film hangs on Hawkes's decision to shoot Faye without irony or distance—letting her rambling, earnest delivery breathe—which transforms what could've been mockumentary fodder into something genuinely moving about belief and connection.