LOS REYES: Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff's canine treat is a doggone winner

The Miami Film Festival opens today and continues through March 10 (you can find out all about it by clicking the above link), and though TrustMovies has seen only a single film in the huge array, it was both good and unusual enough to merit a visit to this annual local cinema event.

I should think that dyed-in-the-wool dog lovers will cream their jeans over LOS  REYES, the new film from Bettina Perut (below, left) and Iván Osnovikoff (below, right). Los reyes translates to the kings and is the name of the oldest skate park in Santiago, Chile. Viewers of this new documentary, however, may rightfully imagine that the name applies to the two stars of the film: Fútbol (above, left) and Chola (above, right), the two stray dogs who have made their permanent home in the park.

The canines seems to have worked out a kind of peace with the many skateboarders who zip and zag around them in the park, and the two animals are the major subjects of this rather amazing movie. The filmmaking team shows the dogs but tells us nothing about them, and this refusal to anthropomorphize the pair in any way is welcome and smart.

Other than ambient sounds, the only dialog we hear is that of the young people who frequent the park and chat to each other about their lives. We barely see these humans but we do hear their oddball and sometimes sad stories of families in disarray, discord and drugs -- into which everything from class, economics and personal responsibility come into play.

All the while the cameras focus on the dogs -- at rest and play, barking, jumping, chasing, panting, even occasionally humping (we see a few other dogs throughout the film, but the focus is almost constantly on Chola and the increasingly aging Fútbol).

And -- oh, boy -- do our filmmakers love unusual close-ups and camera angles. I suspect you will not have seen the doggie sights anywhere else that you will see here (an insect resting on our canine's canine). We view their faces, yes, but also their paws, eyes and snouts. These are "mug shots" like no other.

The juxtapositioning of visuals and dialog makes a very strange combination, one that differentiates the animal world from the human in ways you won't previously have experienced. And this separation seems somehow necessary -- and salutary.

The park itself is at one point repainted and made ready for some kind of event. Along the way we get the sense that the young park goers we hear are somehow growing up a bit. And that the older dog, Fútbol, is declining. The shots we see of insect symbiosis with the older dog is near-shocking but very strange and even oddly moving. Nature in the raw.

Without, I hope, doing too much anthropomorphizing here, it seems to me that the filmmakers allow us to experience loss and grief via the remaining Chola. And this short scene may be enough to break the heart of even the toughest of dog lovers.  Los Reyes is something to see and experience.

The documentary, a co-production of Chile and Germany running just 77 minutes, will play during the Miami Film festival this Sunday, March 3, at 6:45pm at the Silverspot Cinema. I don't think the film has U.S. distribution as yet, but perhaps the recent showing during the FSLC's Film Comment Selects series, coupled to the current one at this Florida film festival, will help induce an intrepid distributor to come aboard.

Marten Persiel's THIS AIN'T CALIFORNIA: skateboarding in the GDR makes for an eye, mind and heart-opening experience

Please don't, when you discover that THIS AIN'T CALIFORNIA deals with skateboarding, relegate it, as I nearly did, to the status of "Are you kidding?" This really hybrid documentary -- from German filmmaker Marten Persiel, who directed and co-wrote it (with Ira Wedel) -- which won the Dialogue en Perspective prize at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival is certainly among the best of this year that I've seen so far (This has been a terrific week for docs, what with The Revolutionary also opening today.) Except, is it really a documentary? Hired actors, recreated "archival" footage, and a main character who may or may not even have existed -- these are just some of the major quibbles brought to the fore after the movie won its Berlinale prize.

Knowing none of this going into the film, I simply sat there and watched, slowly growing more amazed, surprised and intellectually and emotionally wrapped up in the life and times of a young man named Denis (later to become known as Panik) who -- set by his overbearing and uber-controlling dad on-course to become a champion swimmer for the glory of East Germany -- swerves off into skateboarding, girls, guts and glory before dying as a soldier in Afghanistan in 2011. We learn all this very early on; at the conclusion, the filmmakers dedicated their work simply to:  Denis 1970-2011.

Now that I know that Denis (below and further below) may have been either partially or wholly fabricated, I'm a little pissed off. Yet were I to take the film as fiction, I think I would be almost equally as impressed as when I took it for an out-and-out documentary.

What it is, in any case, is a compilation of archival (or "recreated" archival) footage, interviews with old skateboarders and friends of Denis/Panik (or not, as some of these are evidently actors), wonderfully animated sections, and a terrific soundtrack made up of dozens of good songs -- all directed toward telling this amazing tale about a fascinating "character" and his "times."

Denis' early days are depicted and narrated well enough so that his troubles with his dad and his subsequent rebellion makes perfect sense on a psychological level, as does his joining the army after all that has happened (including the collapse of the German Democratic Republic and the reunification of Germany). In fact, so much of the film is so beautifully narrated -- both written and spoken: "Freestyle! That word just sounded like the West!" -- that it's little wonder the movie "took in" spectators and judges alike.

The picture This Ain't California paints of the GDR, its response to skateboarding ("Our streets are not for having fun!") and its harassing of outsiders also seems quite truthful, especially given the other films about East Germany that we've seen over the years: The Tunnel, Good-bye Lenin! and The Lives of Others. Along the way, we learn so many telling little details (the role that the movie Beat Street had on collective solidarity of the GDR) that an entire culture is brought to life. Granted, this was a "forced" culture created from a "fake" place: a kind of prison that nonetheless housed real people for several decades. The fact that this maybe "fake" documentary (but very fine film) has emerged from just such a place offers not a little irony -- as well as some great entertainment.

If you want to learn more about the film and this sly director, there's an interesting Q&A from Kate Gellene via Rooftop Films that you can find by clicking here. To learn more about the controversy surrounding the veracity of the film, click here. Meanwhile, the movie opens theatrically today, Friday, April 12, at the Maysles Cinema here in New York City for a week's run, screening daily at 7:30 pm, with a 4pm matinee, tomorrow, Saturday, April 13. There is also expected to be a limited rollout of the film nationwide in the weeks and months to come