South African actor Embeth Davidtz makes directorial debut with Rhodesia-set drama

After a three-decade career in front of the camera, South African actor Embeth Davidtz is making her directorial debut with Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight.

The film follows 8-year-old Bobo who grows up in a white family in the last days of Rhodesia’s government, after the Rhodesian Bush War. The former British colony became the independent nation of Zimbabwe in 1980.

The film is an adaptation of Alexandra Fuller’s best-selling 2001 memoir of the same name. Embeth Davidtz said she related to the story, having grown up as a white child in South Africa during apartheid. 

"I knew my South African version of living through a version of a war and I saw and read in the book the Zimbabwean version", said Davidtz, who found similarities in the history of the two countries.

Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight is told from the point of view of Bobo, played by Lexi Venter in her first film role.

"At the centre of everything, there is [always] a child watching, there is a child experiencing all the wars all over the world so I just though there was a theme that repeats and repeats and this was an opportunity to take something from 1980 and it's still relevant today", said Davidtz. 

The director and writer also stars as Bobo's mother, Nicola Fuller. 

"The mother is not a likable character. And yet the one possible redeeming factor about her is the fact that she lost children", she said.

"The only argument that holds any water for me, was that her children were buried in that soil. So that's why she didn't want to leave [Rhodesia]."

The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2024 and at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where it was critically acclaimed.

Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight will be released in the United States on 11 July 2025.