The idea of eating man’s best friend was shocking to Andrew Abrahams. Even more so were the cultural beliefs that had become intertwined with South Korea’s dog meat industry. “Like the myths that eating dog was good for male virility or stamina,” the filmmaker said during a recent conversation with TheWrap’s Steve Pond as part of our screening series. “And that the more the dog suffered, the better the meat tasted. Those kinds of myths also interested me. Like, how can that be?”
When he learned that there were American combat vets who have made it their mission to put an end to the dog meat industry in South Korea, he sensed he had a documentary on his hands. “Here were war-hardened veterans who were trained to kill, who would do anything to save an animal, to save a dog,” Abrahams said. “It wasn’t just that they were doing what they could to stop the trade. They were doing actual covert operations. They were doing some things which violated the law or potentially violated the law.”
“Dog Warriors” follows the rescue team as they infiltrate meat farms and markets to save as many dogs as possible from the grim fate that tens of millions of them face each year. The film explores generational shifts in South Korea that have led to homegrown activism against the consumption of canine meat, which some maintain is a centuries-old practice, while others claim it was a response to starvation after the Korean War. What Abrahams discovered from behind the camera was not for the faint of heart: unimaginable cruelty in graphic detail. So one of the first decisions he had to make was how much disturbing violence audiences could handle.
“I made an assumption that was somewhat of an erroneous assumption,” Abrahams said. “I thought that people needed to see some of the harsher realities and that they were open to it.” He compared the gore he documented to the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove,” which exposed dolphin hunting in Japan. Audiences embraced that film, he figured, so they would tolerate the graphic footage he planned for his film, too, right?
“I miscalculated, not just how we’ve changed in the past 15 or so years, because I think that also plays a part in this … and what we expect from films today is different,” Abrahams said. “But I also didn’t realize the extent to which people love their dogs so much more than people that they don’t even want to imagine the horrors. I wasn’t prepared for that.” In the end, he limited how much brutality made the final cut of “Dog Warriors.”
Abrahams was also very mindful of how the film grapples with cultural differences, particularly when they collide with the history of Western imperialism. “Some of the responses … look at the film through the lens of white saviorism,” he said. “Let’s say, ‘Oh, these are white guys going to [Asia] and telling them what to do.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, okay. If that’s the way you see it, let’s have a conversation about that. Let’s talk about that. Is that true? Is that different from other kinds of cultural changes? What do we do about it?’ I think it’s a great starting point for these kinds of conversations which, honestly, I think we should be having instead of ‘My film shows the truth. My film shows the reality of how it should be.’ Let’s include the viewer. Let’s ask the questions.”
And for audience members feeling trepidatious about watching dogs suffer on screen, Abrahams points out that the film ends on a hopeful note: In January 2024, the South Korean government passed a bill banning the dog meat industry. It goes into effect in 2027.
“I think the payoff at the end is significant,” he said. “That this kind of activism actually can help, and that we as people can make a difference in terms of the values that we have and want to fight for.”
