The next Oscar winner will be a dog? Good Boy is the film starring Indy that was submitted to the Academy for consideration for the Oscars

There have been many famous dogs in the history of cinema, even in recent years. Real dog actors — and no, that’s not a joke — we’re talking about actual animals made of flesh and fur. Everyone remembers Messi, the border collie from Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, winner of the Palm Dog in 2023 (the canine equivalent of Cannes’ Palme d’Or). We also remember him walking the 2024 Oscars red carpet, wearing a bow tie. Two years after the release of the French thriller, another dog is now taking the spotlight — and this time, he doesn’t just want a seat at the Academy’s biggest night, he wants to win a statuette.

Indy, who plays himself in the horror film directed by his owner, Ben Leonberg, is a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever at the center of Good Boy, which premiered last March at SXSW and quickly started making waves online after becoming one of the most searched movie titles following the trailer’s release.

There was one question that drove Google wild: Does the dog in Good Boy die? To avoid heartbreak, many people chose to have the ending spoiled before deciding whether to actually see Leonberg’s film starring Indy as its absolute protagonist. A true star aware of his own talent — the director and owner trained him for three years before seeing him “act” on the big screen — Indy even sent a letter to the Oscars committee asking them to consider adding a new category for Best Animal Performance.

A true initiative that might be taken seriously — and it wouldn’t be surprising to see some movement from the Academy — although such a proposal might seem disrespectful to categories like casting directors, who after years will finally be recognized in 2026, or stunt performers, whose dedicated section will only appear in 2028.

Whether he’ll have to wait or not, Indy has thrown a stone that might not go unnoticed by the Oscars. Still, much of the attention now remains on the release and distribution of Good Boy. Ben Leonberg’s work already achieves something original, distancing itself from the many animal-centered films (dogs and otherwise) that have dotted film history, with a level of identification with its four-legged protagonist that had previously been reserved for experimental auteur cinema.

Just like Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO, in which the story unfolds through the eyes of a donkey — itself a contemporary adaptation of Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar — Good Boy takes a similar approach, shifting from donkey to dog, exploring the codes of the horror genre through an animal’s perspective. As with EO, the result is striking, though this time with a more accessible language for a broader audience.

What makes Good Boy special isn’t just placing Indy at the center as a gimmick to make the story more original, but building the narrative around the emotions, instincts, and choices of a dog — shaping the fate of both himself and his owner, not simply reacting to external events. Together with Todd (Shane Jensen) since he was a puppy, Indy witnesses his owner facing an illness that refuses to let go and might soon end his life. Helpless yet deeply caring, Indy does everything he can to save his human best friend, even confronting the evil spirits that seem to haunt Todd’s late grandfather’s old house. The supernatural elements of Good Boy serve as a narrative device to evoke fear and anxiety in the audience, but they also become a metaphor for a dog facing the concepts of life and death — fighting with all his might not to lose his owner, yet learning that life also holds loss, pain, and the return of hope.

A film that doesn’t trivialize Indy’s feelings, but rather amplifies them, allowing the audience to share his experience. The camera follows him always from a dog’s eye level, tracing his physical and inner journey — even his dreams. Of course, Good Boy has its naive moments, and perhaps the idea of a dog protagonist is too easy a hook to win over audiences regardless of the film’s actual outcome. Yet, it must be said that the movie deftly navigates its trickier turns, not reinventing the genre but joyfully playing with it — much like two best friends would.