Dogtooth · reception & legacy
2009 · Yorgos Lanthimos
How Dogtooth has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Landed at Cannes 2009 as a shock Un Certain Regard winner people either loved or walked out of; it's since been canonised as the film that launched the 'Greek Weird Wave' and the whole Lanthimos ascent — the divisive art-house oddity now read as the origin story of an Oscar-winning auteur.
What's debated
The forever fight: brilliant deadpan allegory about control and language, or cold shock-for-shock's-sake provocation with nothing underneath — and whether late, plush Lanthimos ever topped this rawer version of himself.
Its footprint
The invented-vocabulary game (a 'zombie' is a small yellow flower; the 'sea' is a leather armchair) is endlessly quoted, and the unhinged living-room dance scene has become one of the most gif'd, referenced images in 21st-century art cinema.
Where it stands
A Letterboxd-era rite of passage — the 'start here' Lanthimos and the Greek Weird Wave's founding text, firmly in the you-must-have-seen-this tier of modern world cinema.