Rating: 7/10

Director: Geralyn Pezanoski
Producers: Geralyn Pezanoski, Erin Essenmacher
Cinematographers: Jason Rhein, Arlo Rosner
Editor: Jen Brad
Official Site: Mine the Movie

Official Selection of the 2009 Mill Valley Film Festival

Anyone paying any amount of attention to the government’s reaction (or lack thereof) to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in August of 2005 knows what a monumental clusterfuck the whole tragedy became. Inaction by the government and the military, coupled with hysteria in the face of death, the hopeless feeling of being displaced from home, and the simple fact you’ve just lost everything made New Orleans look like compiled scenes from a futuristic end-of-days Hollywood movie. As people waded through chest-high water with what they could gather of their personal possessions, others were awaiting dramatic rescue from the roof of their submerged houses. But as helicopters swooped in to get people to higher ground, they were all told they had to leave their pets behind.

While there are many untold stories of Hurricane Katrina, Geralyn Pezanoski’s documentary MINE does an outstanding job looking at a fairly big, yet unheard of story from the hurricane; that of millions of displaced pets. The film focuses first on rescue efforts lead by Good Samaritan animal lovers from all across the United States. While most of us breathed sighs of relief as people were rescued from the floods, these people looked closer and saw thousands of dogs and cats being left behind to fend for themselves. The film details how people were taken from their homes but forced to leave their pets behind due to not enough room in the rescue vehicles and a strict no pet policy in the rescue shelters. Thus, thousands of animals were left to die. Through the efforts of volunteers, many animals were saved, tagged as best they could and sent to various animal shelters in and around New Orleans. Others were sent to shelters across the U.S.

Just when you think MINE will be the feel-good doc of the year, a new twist is added. We meet several New Orleans residents who were forced to evacuate but, a year later, were back in their homes trying to piece their lives back together. Part of getting their lives back is seeking out and bringing home their lost dogs. However, these dogs have been relocated and, well, the people who adopted them really love them too and don’t want to give them back. Thus a really conflicting story starts to unfold, and I’m still not sure I have the answer to who’s right.

I admire MINE for many reasons. First off, it’s shot down and dirty. The filmmakers got on the ground with what appear to be consumer-ready DV cameras and captured these stories and then crossed the states to conduct interviews. There’s tons of incredible stock footage of rescue efforts and the interviews conducted are insightful and pack an emotional wallop. The other thing I admired about this film is its ability to raise extremely valid points about race and class, ownership, and dealing with disaster and loss.

Many of these New Orleans pet owners are too poor to afford pet medication, so a majority of those rescued were in poor health. In fact, apparently over half of the rescued animals were pit bulls that had seemingly been trained to fight, which is abhorrent. Even so, it’s striking to hear animal activists say Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to these animals. But the people we meet in MINE are people who have lost everything and just want their pets back because they love them. The film manages to show that reclaiming their pets is symbolic as much as anything and, as we meet the families who have adopted these dogs, it becomes infuriating that they are unwilling to give them back to their rightful owners.

Parallels like this are what make MINE such a great little film. It packs a punch, but doesn’t completely pull on your heartstrings. As with most any story told, there are many sides and MINE manages to tell these stories and then detaches to show other sides as well. This information is left up to the viewer to interpret and as such, the film turns out to be pretty controversial. This surprised me since, on the surface, the film is about rescuing animals in the face of disaster but as it went on, I realized the story has much more depth than what I had originally thought. Kudos to the filmmaking team behind MINE for getting at tough questions and letting audiences find their own way.