The Dog Thief (El ladrón de perros)

Vinko Tomičić’s The Dog Thief trades easy sentiment for a raw, restrained intensity, capturing the quiet turbulence of a youth searching for belonging. Martin (Franklin Aro), an orphaned Indigenous shoeshiner, steals Astor, the cherished German shepherd of Señor Novoa (Alfredo Castro, El club, From Afar), a lonely tailor whose life may be more entangled with Martin’s than either expects.

Set against the sweeping backdrop of La Paz’s cable-car-laced skyline, the film excavates themes of race, class, and unspoken kinship with an unvarnished honesty. Tomičić’s patient storytelling resists resolution, offering instead a piercing meditation on the fragile bonds we long for, and the ones that slip through our fingers. A poignant riff on the ties that bind and break us.