Lauris and Raitis Ābele • Directors of Dog of God
“In school, no one teaches us where our werewolf history comes from”
- The filmmaker siblings discuss Livonian werewolf myths and how making a Latvian animation in the wake of Flow has affected them
Latvian directors Lauris and Raitis Ābele (who also work creatively with their other sibling, Marcis) have been making a mark on the filmmaking scene since their debut short, Castratus the Boar (2014), won the Grand Prix at the Tampere Film Festival and their debut feature, Troubled Minds [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lauris Abele, Raitis Abele …
film profile] (2021), bowed as part of the First Feature Competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
Their latest film, Dog of God [+see also:
film review
interview: Lauris and Raitis Ābele
film profile], sees them move into animation with a dark and gritty affair set in 17th-century Livonia, in which a werewolf is discovered within a community. Premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, the movie has already had a remarkable festival run, taking in genre events such as Fantasia, Frightfest and Sitges. It also had its national premiere opening the Riga International Film Festival.
The feature now looks to emulate the success of Flow [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gints Zilbalodis
interview: Red Carpet @ European Film …
film profile], as Dog of God is Latvia’s entry for Best International Feature at the 2026 Academy Awards (see the news) as well being a 2026 European Film Awards nominee for both European Film and European Animated Feature (see the news).
Cineuropa caught up with the directors after a screening at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival to delve deeper into the film.
Cineuropa: Can you give us a bit more of an insight into the origins of the film?
Raitis Ābele: In 2010, I was in New York, studying film there, and I was in the Strand Bookstore, where I saw a book by who I thought was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams. But it was actually by an author called Adam Douglas, and the book was called The Beast Within. It’s all about werewolves, and a big chapter is all about “Livonian Werewolves”. I learned that it’s a different mythology from the typical werewolf myth, which originates in Southern France and Switzerland and has been typified in Hollywood. In Livonian mythology, a werewolf can be good or bad, and goes to fight devils, witches and evil spirits.
Lauris Ābele: In Latvia, if you go to the countryside, there are still people who believe in werewolves. We were fascinated that in Latvia, we have so many weird historical and folkloric stories that can be discovered. In school, no one teaches us where our werewolf history comes from.
And how did discovering these myths morph into the film?
RA: Lauris was developing Dog of God as a live-action film. In the meantime, I went to the Baltic Pitching Forum with Harijs Grundmanis [who would become the lead artist on Dog of God] and [pitched the short animation Tool], which played with rotoscope and animation ideas. We had some similar concepts, but originally, the ideas that Lauris and I were working on had no connection at all.
LA: But then, we took this beautiful journey as part of the European Genre Forum, and we’re so grateful to the Black Nights Film Festival because they brought us to Cannes and to the Fantastic Seven programme. There, Matt Barone from Tribeca saw our pitch, and Tribeca is where we ended up.
Tell us about the decision to use rotoscope, which allows you to animate over real actors.
RA: It was partly practical because we’d worked with live-action feature films and were used to working with real-life actors.
LA: We sometimes get comments like, “Oh, we forgot that it was an animation,” because people can feel the presence of the actors. But also, we wanted the audience to feel the mud and the rain, and to smell the smells. It’s like when I watch certain Pasolini films – I feel like I want to go for a shower afterwards. We wanted to take the film out of being made in 2025 and to a time when things were physical and practical.
While this film was being made, another Latvian animated feature, Flow, took the world by storm. How did you feel that it might affect the reception of Dog of God?
RA: It’s a bit like Monty Python: we go to screenings and say, “And now for something completely different.” The fact that the films are complete opposites means we feel no stress at all. Flow has opened a lot of doors. The great thing is that we’re from a small region, and something like Flow can showcase the beautiful and poetic, while we can showcase the weird and the crazy.
Any hints as to what you’re working on next?
LA: It’s a live-action occult thriller called Wagner and Satan. It’s about the composer Wagner when he was deep in debt – collectors knocking on his door, everything. So, he runs away to the fjords. There, wanting to make music that will make people go crazy, he engages in some occult rituals.
RA: It’s very Faustian.
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