It's a Dog's Life
2012 · 7m · Canada
Directed by Julie Rembauville, Nicolas Bianco-Levrin
Genres: animation, comedy, family
Tones: contemplative, humorous, whimsical
Family dog Fifi, blamed for everyone's misbehaviour, fantasizes about escaping to interstellar travel while sneaking newspaper stories about space science whenever the household lets him rest.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A dog-escapes-via-space-fantasy premise should be audacious, but this lands safely in whimsy—the subversive kernel (scapegoating a pet) gets swallowed by family-friendly sentimentality before it can actually bite.
The interweaving of domestic realism with cosmic daydream sequences positions this thoughtfully within animation's lineage of psychological escape narratives, though the execution doesn't quite achieve the formal precision that would elevate it beyond competent craft.
That choice to anchor Fifi's fantasy through stolen newspaper clippings—using found typography and real science facts as the gateway to otherworldly imagining—transforms a familiar premise into something genuinely inventive, doing genuine world-building work on a modest budget.