Space Dog

"Space dog" is a game that involves breathing fast and shallow, then holding your breath and letting someone choke you until you faint. It is a popular game among children, as we learn from the protagonist of Space Dog. He stopped playing it himself after it went wrong for two fiends of his. One of them is now undergoing serious therapy, while the other died. He now prefers football, the teenager says. He hangs around the neighborhood with his friends, sometimes setting fire to something or ringing random doorbells. Here and there, he sprays some graffiti, but all this changes when he falls for an older girl. She isn't interested, she tells the interviewer on a park bench, in the arms of another. She had enough when one day she found her neighbor's flowers by her front door, and a declaration of love daubed under her window. He'd be better off playing games more appropriate to his age, she thinks. In the meantime, the boy discovers that the brief hallucination "space dog" causes gives him the sensation the girl won't. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)