A young girl rides a bicycle through the deserted streets of an unnamed European city. As she pedals, a pack of dogs careers into the street behind her, their number growing at every corner, until she is pursued by hundreds of barking hounds at full speed. Thus begins Kornel Mundruczo’s terrifying allegory, in which man's best friend turns out not to be so friendly. The girl, 13-year-old Lili (Zsofia Psotta), is devoted to her beautiful dog Hagan, but her mean-spirited father forces her to abandon him. There are new regulations taxing dog ownership, and only pedigree dogs get privileges; bitzers get dumped on the streets, by the hundreds. The film then follows Hagan from one misery to another, a series of encounters that brutalise his spirit and traumatise the viewer. Mundruczo gives us very little reason to be proud of our species, perhaps in order to justify what's coming. The dogs rebel, in a way that almost destroys the film's credibility. The film divided critics at Cannes this year. Some loved its science-fiction premise, its superb and powerful imagery, its heady metaphors; others were horrified by its cruelty and bizarre tone, somewhere between a children's film and a rabid genre piece. There is no doubting Mundruczo’s talent, but some have questioned the violence of his aesthetics. Dog lovers may find the film an ordeal.

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