Loving a pet is usually accompanied by a sombre and unavoidable truth: unless you’ve bought a puppy to accompany you through your final days or are providing excellent care to your tortoise, your dear animal companion will likely precede you in death. However, if you’re a dog owner who happens to have $100,000 to spare, the wonders of modern medical technology do offer a potential loophole. Co-starring the Canadian filmmaker Sophy Romvari, her beloved 16-year-old Shih Tzu Norman and the US singer and dog-cloning proponent Barbra Streisand, Norman, Norman follows Romvari as she falls into a YouTube hole on the promises, perils and prohibitive cost of pet cloning. Bittersweet and inflected with understated humour, this offbeat short debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2018.
How does Norman, a 16-year-old Shih Tzu, see the pet cloning dilemma?
Director: Sophy Romvari

videoAnimals and humans
The joys and heartbreaks of loving a creature who ages faster than you
11 minutes

videoLove and friendship
What does it mean to say goodbye to a creature that doesn’t know you’re leaving?
13 minutes

videoAnimals and humans
What the ancient city of Kars looks like from the perspective of its stray dogs
9 minutes

videoIllness and disease
As a young man’s sight fails him, friendship and night fishing help to keep his bearings
13 minutes

videoAnimals and humans
How the devotion of a canine companion enhanced the life of a disability advocate
4 minutes

videoAgeing and death
We’re not the only animals that appear to grieve. What are the implications?
6 minutes

videoAnimals and humans
‘When it comes to the end, we all want the same things.’ Why animals need a good death
15 minutes

videoMood and emotion
‘Let me dream you into my reality’: memories illuminate an unthinkable isolation
12 minutes

videoAgeing and death
When his elderly parents make a suicide pact, Doron struggles to accept their choice
19 minutes