18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The death of colonialism, as seen through a child's eyes
When you come across a role as rich as Nicola Fuller, the mother in 'Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight,' and no one wants to make the movie, you may as well do it yourself. I imagine that was Embeth Davidtz's thinking when the actress decided to step behind the camera for her directorial debut, an acute and atmospheric adaptation of Alexandra Fuller's prizewinning 2001 memoir about the final days of White rule in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Davidtz is known for playing women of fragility — Helen Hirsch in 'Schindler's List,' Miss Honey in 'Matilda' — but here she bites into the red meat of a deluded matriarch, and the performance is vivid with nerve and steel.
