Shadow of a Dog
2022 · 10m · United States
Directed by Sean Paulsen, Brad Wickham
Genres: documentary, mystery, thriller
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tense
Brooklyn animal tracker Jim Tierney hunts for a lost foster dog in Evergreens Cemetery, in a nocturnal, noir-tinged search mission.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a competent nocturnal manhunt wrapped in noir drag, but it never commits to the weird—the premise wants to be *about* something (urban solitude? the animal's perspective?) and keeps flinching away from it.
A formally aware piece that understands the grammar of search-and-find narratives and the visual language of night cinematography, even if the emotional architecture feels a beat too familiar.
The decision to track the dog's absence rather than the dog itself—following the *shape* of what's missing through sound design and negative space—is the move that makes this register as something more than a recovery story.
Reviews
I love this feel good short documentary "Shadow of a Dog." It begins on the gritty streets of Brooklyn and feels straight out of a film noir.