Heart of a Dog

Heart of a Dog (2015) is a personal essay film you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by multimedia artist and musician Laurie Anderson, it runs 75 minutes and refuses to behave like a conventional documentary.

The starting point is the death of her rat terrier Lolabelle in 2011. From there, Anderson layers in the loss of her mother and her husband, rock musician Lou Reed, weaving together hand-drawn animation, Buddhist texts on dying, archival footage, and her own score. Surveillance culture in post-9/11 America surfaces as an unexpected thread — the act of being watched, recorded, remembered.

This isn't grief processed into sentiment. It's Anderson thinking aloud on screen, and the result is genuinely unlike anything else from that year. Stream Heart of a Dog (2015) online on iFILM.