Fabian: Going to the Dogs

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Fabian: Going to the Dogs

Released Feb 11, 2022

2h 56m

Drama

History

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93%

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27 Reviews

75%

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Fewer than 50 Ratings

Berlin, 1931. Jakob Fabian works in the advertising department of a cigarette factory during the day and drifts through bars, brothels and artist studios with his wealthy friend Labude at night. When Fabian gets to know the self-confident Cornelia, he manages to shed his pessimistic attitude for a brief moment. He falls in love. But then he too falls victim to the great wave of layoffs, while Cornelia makes a career as an actress thanks to her boss and admirer. An arrangement that Fabian finds difficult to come to terms with. But it's not just his world that is falling apart...

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Robert Abele

Los Angeles Times

There couldn’t be a more auspicious time for a movie about well-intentioned, troubled souls on the precipice of authoritarianism.

Mar 3, 2022

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Pat Brown

Slant Magazine

Its characters are suffused with a paradoxical kind of fear that can only happen in a dream -- the dread before an immense catastrophe that’s unavoidable because it’s already happened.

Rated: 3.5/4

Feb 11, 2022

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Ryan Lattanzio

IndieWire

Graf makes Going to the Dogs an unpredictable visual experience, bracingly experimental for a 68-year-old filmmaker who hasn’t run out of gas.

Rated: B

Feb 11, 2022

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Ryan Swen

Film Comment

In typical Graf fashion, the film resonates as both a fully fleshed-out melodrama and a grand portrait of the times.

Jul 14, 2025

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Filipe Freitas

Always Good Movies

The stirring beauty of Graf’s drama comes from the genuine feelings transmitted by the leads, who, together with the editor Claudia Wolscht, contribute to the furiously cinematic outcome.

Rated: 4/5

Sep 18, 2022

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Gisela Savdie

El Heraldo

Graf walks us through a mixture of genres that range from the most surreal to the most realistic, with an interesting development of the characters [Full review in Spanish]

Rated: B

Aug 15, 2022

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Andreas M

10/10 garbage. Just the all too familar pattern of a pseudo feminist propagandist hijacking a beloved IP, distorting it beyond recognition only to spread unfettered anti- male hatred. Erich Kästner's masterpiece from the 1930 explored a lost generation, suffering through the Great Depression and the dissolution of the late Weimarer Republic. People, no matter the gender, were left to participate in merely transactional relationships. Women had to sell their bodies, men had to beg and the fortunate were ready to mercilessly exploit both for personal gain or political influence. Same sex and intersex relationships are portrayed with detail and nuance, and how values like friendship, love, companionship or basic human decency, already bend by human nature, have been fully broken by the cruel realities of their circumstances. It is simply a masterpiece and watching that scharlatan and completly talentless hack Dominik Graf butchering it, made me cry. If he had only read the book before slaughtering its name by putting it on the steamy pile of garbage this miniseries is, he may have abstained from bastardizing ithis masterpiece and just gave his uninspired, disgusting, cheap, shallow, superficial, repugnant, and repelling concotion a more fitting name like "2 men 1 cup", This name would have captured the quality of the show as well as the feelings it causes more accurately.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

08/30/23

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Naomi M

One of my favourite german movies to date ! Went to see it in Berlin and i loved the arthouse, experimental, kaleidoscopic style and the characters.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

12/14/22

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Dominik Graf

Director

Tom Schilling

Jakob Fabian

Albrecht Schuch

Stephan Labude

Saskia Rosendahl

Cornelia Battenberg

Meret Becker

Irene Moll

Michael Wittenborn

Justizrat Labude

Fabian: Going to the Dogs: Trailer 1

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Synopsis

Berlin, 1931. Jakob Fabian works in the advertising department of a cigarette factory during the day and drifts through bars, brothels and artist studios with his wealthy friend Labude at night. When Fabian gets to know the self-confident Cornelia, he manages to shed his pessimistic attitude for a brief moment. He falls in love. But then he too falls victim to the great wave of layoffs, while Cornelia makes a career as an actress thanks to her boss and admirer. An arrangement that Fabian finds difficult to come to terms with. But it's not just his world that is falling apart...

Director: Dominik Graf
Producer: Felix von Boehm
Screenwriter: Dominik Graf, Constantin Lieb
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Production Co: Lupa Film, Arte, DCM Productions, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, Doco Digital
Genre: Drama, History
Original Language: German
Release Date (Theaters): Feb 11, 2022, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Apr 12, 2022
Box Office (Gross USA): $25.0K
Runtime: 2h 56m

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