War rarely asks for permission before it creeps into childhood. In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, the civil unrest of 1970s Rhodesia—now Zimbabwe—forms the inescapable backdrop of a young girl’s coming of age. Based on Alexandra Fuller’s acclaimed memoir of the same name, the film unflinchingly portrays the lived reality of a white settler family caught in the throes of the Zimbabwe War of Independence. Directed by Embeth Davidtz, a South African whose proximity to similar postcolonial fault lines lends her storytelling a raw, lived authenticity, the film masterfully balances personal memory with the weight of historical consequence.
This is not a war film in the traditional sense. There are no battlefield heroics, no sweeping military campaigns, no tales of resistance leaders or triumphant uprisings. Instead, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight chooses an unusual vantage point: the dusty fields of a rural farm, the strained silence of a kitchen, the watchful eyes of a young girl. War, here, does not arrive with fanfare; it brews in glances, in hushed conversations, in the flicker of a television screen showing mutilated bodies. It comes quietly, but decisively, into the lives of those who cannot even begin to understand it—children.
At the film’s center is eight-year-old Bobo Fuller (played with fiery charm by Lexi Venter), a curious, untamed, and often mischievous girl living with her white Rhodesian family on a farm far removed from the chaos of cities but deeply embedded in the tension of civil war. Through Bobo’s eyes, the story unfolds with childlike innocence and filtered awareness, offering a piercing study of how children internalize the racial and political structures around them without fully understanding their implications.
Her mother, Nicola Fuller—portrayed by Davidtz herself—is a deeply anxious and rigid woman, whose brand of motherhood is far from gentle. A policewoman by profession, Nicola sleeps with a rifle in her arms, clutching it as one might a childhood blanket—only here, comfort is conflated with violence. Her entire demeanor is etched with the residue of fear and paranoia; her posture stiff, her gaze constantly searching, her voice taut with tension. Nicola’s parenting style, if it can be called that, is not built on affection but survival. She is a woman permanently braced for a war she feels is both imminent and personal.
The family’s patriarch, a soldier, remains mostly offscreen, always away on military duty. He is a looming presence rather than an active one, a symbol of absent authority rather than protective fatherhood. Meanwhile, Bobo’s older sister Van (played by Anina Reed) is cast in the archetypal role of the moody teen sibling, resentful and disinterested. Yet the film provides Van with a fragment of her own storyline—one involving the inappropriate advances of a local man—hinting at the broader vulnerabilities that women, young and old, must navigate in such an environment.
But it is Bobo, and only Bobo, who remains the narrative’s core and lens. Her perceptions, limited and often blissfully ignorant, are what shape the film’s tone and texture. This is a world interpreted by a child: nuanced realities are flattened into puzzles, grave injustices fade into the background, and everything—from riding motorbikes to smoking stolen cigarettes—becomes part of a grand, unfiltered adventure. Bobo is, in many ways, wild and unpolished, unconcerned with the expectations of girlhood, and often an irritant to her more conservative mother and worldly sister. Her rebellious spirit, however, is tempered by the presence of Sarah (Zikhona Bali), a Black local woman who functions as a surrogate caregiver and emotional anchor in Bobo’s life.
Sarah’s character represents the nurturing femininity absent in Nicola’s hard-edged approach to motherhood. She brings tenderness, correction, and wisdom in ways that contrast sharply with the coldness of the Fuller household. In their dynamic, one witnesses the subtle yet profound impact that non-biological caretakers can have on a child’s moral and emotional growth—especially in environments fractured by racial and class divides.
The land itself becomes a crucial character in the story—a dual symbol of violence and belonging. On one hand, this is the landscape of guerrilla warfare, of unseen enemies hiding within thick bush, of territorial contestation. On the other hand, it is also the only home Bobo has ever known. She adores the African soil beneath her feet, the vegetation that surrounds her, the rhythm of the farm—even if she doesn’t understand that the land is not truly hers to love. In a moment as poignant as it is revealing, Nicola bluntly informs her daughter that she is not African. When Bobo innocently attributes this to the color of her skin, her mother replies, “It’s complicated.” That single phrase captures the film’s tension between inherited identity and constructed belonging.
What the adults in the audience see clearly—the entrenched racism of white settlers, the unjust distribution of land, the dehumanization of Black lives—is something Bobo only begins to glimpse in fractured moments. Much like how a child overhears snippets of adult conversations without grasping their significance, Bobo’s world is full of shadowy outlines she cannot yet define. The film wisely chooses not to position her as an all-knowing narrator. Instead, we see her slowly, painfully begin to connect the dots. Her journey is not one of total awakening, but of dawning recognition.
This subtle arc becomes apparent during interactions between the Fullers and the local Black community. Sarah’s husband, for instance, is uneasy about her closeness with the Fuller family, aware of the social repercussions such intimacy might provoke. Bobo remains mostly unaware of this unease. To her, Sarah is simply kind and constant. But the film doesn’t shy away from letting us see the full picture. The underlying tension of a racially divided society—where trust is scarce and affiliation can be dangerous—undergirds every warm exchange with invisible stakes.
A particularly haunting moment occurs at a local party. While adults dance, drink, and celebrate in loud abandon, Bobo’s gaze drifts away from the laughter and lights to a flickering television screen in the background. On it, the face of a dead African soldier, half-blown apart, fills the frame. Her eyes hold on the image—not quite horrified, not quite understanding, but aware, undeniably aware, that something has shifted. In that glance, childhood innocence takes a quiet step toward adult reckoning.
One of the most intellectually provocative elements of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is its narrative choice to root the entire story in a white settler child’s perspective. This decision comes with inherent limitations, especially when considering the film’s subject matter—colonialism, racial violence, and national liberation. At times, it feels as though the story sidesteps the voices of those who fought for Zimbabwe’s freedom, choosing instead to focus on the personal discomfort and disintegration of a colonial family. Yet this is also precisely the story the film wants to tell—not the war’s heroics, but its emotional fallout on those who believed they were entitled to stay.
This choice doesn’t render the film blind to its own privilege, however. The final act, in particular, makes it clear that while Bobo may be the lens through which we view events, the film itself is more self-aware than she is. As the camera lingers on her daydreams, including an imagined reunion with Sarah, the emotional tone turns bittersweet. There’s a melancholy recognition that this girl, though spirited and open-hearted, has been raised within a structure that demands unlearning. Her relationship with the land, with Sarah, even with herself, must undergo transformation if it is to evolve beyond the confines of settler delusion.
The film’s setting—largely limited to the Fuller family’s farmhouse and the surrounding village—amplifies this sense of psychological enclosure. Though the war may rage elsewhere, it is the smallness of this space that allows Bobo’s innocence to persist as long as it does. This is not a sanctuary in the truest sense—it is laced with fear and isolation—but it functions as a protective bubble for a girl not yet ready to face the full implications of her world. Her slow and reluctant confrontation with those realities forms the heart of the story.
Even scenes that seem deceptively playful carry an undertone of discomfort. When Bobo plays with local Black children, she instinctively casts them as servants in her imaginative games—a reflection of the unconscious racism she’s inherited. It is only through Sarah’s firm correction that she begins to see these children not as props but as equals. This small yet pivotal shift illustrates how change begins—not in grand gestures, but in tiny ruptures of perception.
Ultimately, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is less interested in resolving these tensions than in presenting them. It doesn’t wrap its narrative in redemption or revolution. Instead, it offers a quietly disquieting glimpse into the early formation of racial consciousness in a settler child. The film is not an indictment of Bobo, but neither does it let her off the hook. It leaves us with the sense that her journey is far from over. She may love Africa, but love without understanding is not enough.
Through Embeth Davidtz’s steady and sensitive direction, and Lexi Venter’s luminous performance, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight manages to be both intimate and expansive. It invites viewers to peer into the interior lives of a family unraveling at the edges of history, while never losing sight of the larger forces at play. In doing so, it accomplishes something rare: a war film that forgoes explosions and bloodshed in favor of quiet revelations and slow burns.
In the end, this is a story about perspective—how it shapes us, limits us, and, if we’re lucky, expands. Bobo’s story may be bound by whiteness, but it is not immune to change. In the stillness of memory, under the shadow of conflict, the seeds of transformation are quietly sown.
