In a world where brand relevance lives and dies by cultural awareness, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is more than just a film, it’s a reckoning. Embeth Davidtz’s unflinching directorial debut doesn’t simply revisit colonial Zimbabwe-Rhodesia; it forces us to see the fractures, privileges, and inherited narratives that still echo in today’s global power shifts. American born, Embeth (Schindler’s List, Bridget Jones’ Diary, The Amazing Spider-Man) grew up in South Africa between the age of 8 and left for LA in her mid-20s.
For marketers and brand leaders, this is not just cinema, it’s a case study in the emotional currents shaping modern identity and consumer consciousness (read to the end for 5 key lessons brand managers can take from the film). In this exclusive interview for The Wire, Davidtz reveals how confronting the most uncomfortable parts of our history can open the door to the most powerful conversations of our time.
The Wire: You’ve described this film as part of a lifelong reckoning with your South African past. What moment or memory finally convinced you that it was time to stop being silent and tell this story through film?
Embeth Davidtz: I can’t say that there was a specific moment that convinced me to stop being silent and tell the story. I think when I read the book in 2003, I remember thinking this tells so much of the same story that I remember seeing. It was the first time I felt like somebody had really written about what it was to be a white child, seeing what was happening in South Africa at the time of apartheid. Even though her story is about Zimbabwe, for me, I saw the South African story reflected. I’d taken time off from acting, and looking to find a good part, and I remembered the part of the mother. When I read the book a second time, I said, “wow”, this really could make a great film. And again, the thing that always pulled me to it was the fact that the story was so, so similar. To the South African experience, my recollection of being a child and what I saw and heard at that time.
TW: After decades of acclaimed acting roles, what was the scariest, and most liberating part of stepping behind the camera for the first time?
ED: The scariest part was how to tell the story visually? I know intellectually how to do it, but how do I visually capture it? And so, I was very nervous about my ability. In the first 5-6 days when a couple of things came up, I knew exactly how to shoot something. I saw the DP setting something up, and he’s a brilliant DP. He lit beautifully, but I said “no, no”, I don’t want it like that. I want it like this. And when I saw it played back, I went, “Oh my God”, I actually do know how to visually tell the story. So, I can’t talk about various lenses and all the famous tricks, but I did know what the pictures needed to be and I knew how to move a camera to get those. I was most terrified of that. But in a strange way, that was the thing I was most surprised to find out that I knew how to do it. And that was really liberating.
TW: The character of Bobo reflects a child’s oblivious complicity within colonial systems. How much of her worldview mirrored your own childhood experiences, and how did that influence your direction of the story?
ED: I think again what I related to was Bobo’s oblivious complicity with that colonial system. I arrived from America at the age of 8 and I was like, wow, this is a different world than what I remember things looking like in New Jersey. Alexandra Fuller’s description of her inner world, what she was seeing, rang the bell of memory in me and reminded me I used to look at things like that, and think something at the back of my mind, or make an offhand comment, and not realise till much older how casually racist those comments were, and how much of that is learned behaviour. You watch and you learn from the people around you. So, it absolutely affected the direction of the story because I wanted to go head on into that. I didn’t want to skirt it. And I remember when I was meeting producers in America, nobody wanted to go near the idea of race or talking about race. But that’s the point. That was the point of the book, her saying this is what I saw. The reason you go into this sort of warfare of making a film – because it’s not an easy thing to do – is because you have something that you want to say. I wanted to unpack that memory and that that recollection of mine. You’re taught a certain thing and then you unlearn it. As you get older.
TW: You’ve openly acknowledged the “questionable optics” of a white filmmaker telling a story set in Zimbabwe. How did you navigate the responsibility of portraying that history without centering white victimhood?
ED: All I knew was this. There was no part of me that ever wanted to make the whites look vulnerable. There’s never really a white person whose story is worse than what was happening to the black people at the time. And I was so assured of that, that I thought I can tell this story because I’m going to tell it truthfully. Even for Nicola, in the scene where she breaks down, maybe where people say they might have sympathy for her, that’s the scene where she is whipping people with a riding crop.And so that was very calculated on my part. For me, it was the only way to do this. Tell it so truthfully to put the race stuff front and centre. I just thought that I have to tell this story as it was. If you talk to Rhodesians, ex- Zimbabweans, some of which have come to my screenings and come to meet me afterwards, it’s interesting, because they will stumble into telling white victimhood stories themselves. And the whole point of the film, what the ending of the film and Sarah’s story sums up, is in the end, everybody loses.
TW: Nicola is unapologetically diabolical, with no softening edges. Why was it important for you to strip her of any charm, and what did playing such raw racism demand of you emotionally?
ED: It was a choice to play her unlikeable. In the book, she’s actually a much more charming, outgoing, funny, intelligent woman. I focused the story on Bobo and through Bobo’s eyes. I really needed to show why people like that would fight to the death for land and let their humanity be subjugated and just disappear. It was land and ownership and supremacy over everything.
TW: You’ve said growing up in South Africa meant you “watched something silently for a long time.” Do you see this film as a form of finally speaking up, not just about your past, but about patterns of injustice that still echo globally today?
ED: Yes, absolutely. I watched something silently, as the film’s a way of finally speaking up about my past and also what’s going on globally today. It’s interesting because I have since received so many messages now that the film has opened in South Africa. I’ve heard there are packed auditoriums. Film, cinema goers and people sitting until the last credit has rolled and then sent me messages because what it’s done. I was talking to Trevor Noah about it. I said this has hit a nerve. It’s like a collective wound, people are going to the theatre to see it and then going back to see it again or telling people to go see it. It speaks to a moment in time that I just didn’t ever think anybody really told the truth about from the point of view of what I saw and experienced, and what my culpability in that was. Because you feel guilty when you’re an adult and you look back at your childhood knowing you’re a part of that even if you didn’t know any better, which is really what I wanted to illustrate with Bobo. Its echoed today, you see it on the news; Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza and fighting for land and the children in it. It’s like an echo chamber.
TW: You referenced filmmakers like Terrence Malick and Peter Weir in shaping your cinematic language. What visual details or creative choices were non-negotiable in capturing the unsettling normalcy of colonial life?
ED: I really had to show this parched landscape. I didn’t want to glamorize the land. I didn’t want the “Out of Africa”. I didn’t want to show the beautiful big skies but a harshness. A harshness to the light, to the colour of the soil and what the house really was. I was very specific about that. There’s a line I used in in the screenplay where I said when I was describing the house, ”it’s the empire in decay”. It was once a grand house, but to this particular family plagued by alcoholism, mental illness and racism, it fell apart. It’s the ugly underbelly of the whites who were drinking and taking and not necessarily being conscious people.
TW: The film ends with a glimmer that Bobo might outgrow the racism she inherited. For you personally, as a woman, an artist, and now a director, what does hope look like when confronting such painful histories?
ED: Alexander Fuller has always talked about the fact that the inheritance, for her, were the things she took away from having lived in different African countries – what she was given by the indigenous people, the love, the community support, the spirit, and that is something that has sustained her through her life. I had this idea which wasn’t in the book to show this vision of what Bobo sees at the end, because I needed hope. I didn’t want the film to end on the note of the Land Rover driving away and of all their faces facing away from where they’ve just been. I needed there to be this sort of moment of potential hope, that there was transformation.
When I go back to South Africa I see a very integrated society. I see the results of what. Colonialism did; the wealth inequity, the crime, all the generational results of colonialism or white supremacy. But yet. I always say that there is in the spirit of the people in the integration of the society, in the artists that come out of their people wanting to tell a story. People wanting to shine a light that feels hopeful to me, you know. Watch the stories that will come, the movies that will come out of the Ukraine. The stories that will come out of Gaza and come out of Israel about this moment in time. For me, that’s what I see when I look back at southern Africa. So yeah, that’s the hope.
Here are five key lessons brand managers can take from Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and Embeth Davidtz’s approach to storytelling, each anchored in how to craft impactful, resonating narratives:
1. Tell the Uncomfortable Truth
Davidtz didn’t shy away from the ugliness of colonialism, showing it unfiltered through a child’s eyes.
Brand takeaway: Audiences respect honesty. Lean into the truths that are raw, complex, or uncomfortable, they create deeper trust and emotional connection.
2. Use Perspective to Reframe the Familiar
By telling the story through Bobo’s limited worldview, Davidtz forces the audience to confront complicity in a new way.
Brand takeaway: Reframe familiar issues from unexpected angles to spark curiosity and challenge assumptions.
3. Let the Small Details Speak Loudly
Davidtz focused on intimate, symbolic visuals; dusty fingernails, filtered light, to communicate larger themes.
Brand takeaway: The details you choose in storytelling can carry as much weight as the big picture. Precision creates memorability.
4. Create Narratives with Layers
The film is both a personal coming-of-age story and a historical reckoning, offering multiple entry points for audiences.
Brand takeaway: Build layered stories that can be experienced emotionally, intellectually, and culturally to reach diverse audiences.
5. Align Message with Purpose
Davidtz’s work stems from personal history and a desire to confront systemic injustice.
Brand takeaway: Ensure your narratives connect authentically to your brand’s values, when purpose drives the story, the impact lasts longer.