Stray by Elizabeth LO

By Moira Sullivan Stray is a documentary made in Istanbul about three dogs who roam the streets and who eventually are taken care of by young Syrian refugee boys. The film is made by the award winning short film documentarian Elizabeth Lo from Hong Kong. She went to Tisch in NYC and received an MFA from Stanford This is her debut feature. Stray is a metaphor that not only fits the dogs but their caretakers as they all live in the streets scrimping for food and shelter. The areas where the dogs roam and the boys live are run down places such as abandoned apartment buildings, streets, beaches, open fields and shops. The film is made with a mobile camera and there are a lot of tracking shots of the dogs angled low to the ground for their heights, It is not a scripted film and there are non-actors so it seems, making it a compelling neorealist film. People in the streets are aware they are being filmed but don’t seem to mind or even to notice or care. The shots of Istanbul are not pret