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My Life as a Dog
My Life as a Dog DVD cover
Directed by	Lasse Hallström
Produced by	Waldemar Bergendahl
Written by	Lasse Hallström Reidar Jönsson Brasse Brännström Per Berglund
Starring	Anton Glanzelius Tomas von Brömssen
Release date(s)	December 12, 1985 24 March 1987
Running time	101 min.
Language	Swedish
IMDb profile

My Life as a Dog (Swedish: Mitt liv som hund) is a 1985 Swedish film based on a novel by Reidar Jönsson. It tells the story of Ingemar, a young boy sent to live with relatives. The movie features Anton Glanzelius, Melinda Kinnaman and Tomas von Brömssen.

Mischievous 12-year-old Ingemar (Anton Ganzelius) gets into all sorts of trouble, which drives his mother (Anki Lidén) crazy, not knowing that she is terminally ill. When he and his older brother become too much for her, they are split up and sent to live with relatives. Ingemar ends up with his uncle Gunnar (von Brömssen) and his wife Ulla (Kicki Rundgren) in a small rural town in Småland.

There he encounters a variety of characters. Saga (Kinnaman), an assertive tomboy his own age, likes him, and shows it by beating him up in a boxing match. Among the more eccentric residents is Fransson (Magnus Rask), a man who continually fixes the roof of his house, and Mr. Arvidsson (Didrik Gustavsson), an old man living downstairs who gets Ingemar to read to him from a lingerie catalog.

Later, Ingemar is reunited with his family, but his mother soon takes a turn for the worse and is hospitalized. He and his brother go to stay with their uncle Sandberg (Leif Ericson) in the city, but his wife thinks the boy is crazy. After his mother passes away, he is sent back to Småland.

Mr. Arvidsson has died in the interim; Gunnar and Ulla now share the house with a large Greek family. Gunnar welcomes him and consoles him as best he can, but the house is so crowded, he has Ingemar live with Mrs. Arvidsson in another house. Meanwhile, Ingemar becomes the object of contention between Saga and another girl. When they start fighting over him, he grabs onto Saga's leg and starts barking like a dog. She becomes upset by his strange behavior and gets him into the boxing ring. During the bout, out of spite, she tells him that his beloved dog (which he had thought was in a kennel) was actually euthanized. This, along with his mother's death, is too much for him and he locks himself inside Gunnar's one-room "summer house" in the backyard. However, he gets over it.

The movie ends with the radio broadcast of a famous heavyweight championship boxing match, between Swede Ingemar Johansson and American Floyd Patterson. When Johansson wins, the whole town erupts with joy, but the now-reconciled Ingemar and Saga are fast asleep together on a couch.

Throughout the film, Ingemar tells himself over and over that it could have been worse, reciting several examples, such as a man who took a shortcut onto the field during a track meet and was killed by a javelin and the story of the dog Laika several times, the first creature sent into orbit by the Russians (without any way to get her back down).

The film was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Director and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. It won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1987.

• My Life As a Dog at the Internet Movie Database
• My Life As a Dog at All Movie Guide
• Criterion Collection essay by Michael Atkinson

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