Filmdom's new pet obsession | Animals in films

In 2022, during the downward arc of the COVID-19 pandemic, filmmaker Amit Rai saw a dog adoption post on Facebook. He didn’t care that it wasn’t a pedigreed breed or that it had a slight limp in a hind leg. “I felt proud of myself, thinking I will look after him,” he says. But the pride soon evaporated as Rai realised “woh mujhko paal raha hai (he’s taking care of me)!” Rai describes the arrival of Oscar as a life-changing experience, one that would inspire him to write a script summing up the emotions he felt for his pet. The result was Ohh My Dog (OMD), in which Oscar plays Momo, a lost pet whose search brings a tech-savvy kid up against corrupt police officers and illegal dog-meat mafia. The scene-stealer, though, was Bruno, a trained indie dog who runs, sniffs, barks and howls to find a child kidnapped by an organ trafficking ring.