Filmed on working farms across rural Aotearoa, The Dog Show celebrates family, community and the remarkable bond between people and their dogs—with warmth, humour and unmistakable Kiwi spirit.
When a slick out-of-towner rolls into the district promising to put the place on the map with a televised dog trial, the Kelleher family reckon they've seen this sort of thing before. Angus has farmed these hills for forty-two years. His daughter has come home for a fortnight and stayed for a season. And his granddaughter Tui has quietly become the best handler in the family — if only anyone would let her prove it.
What follows is a story about the things a family says to each other and the much bigger things they don't. It's about a district that turns up when it matters, a hall with a leaking roof and an unbeatable sausage sizzle, and one stubborn black-and-white heading dog who understands everybody perfectly and obeys almost nobody.
Real places. Real communities. A distinctly New Zealand story.
We shot on working farms, in real woolsheds, on gravel roads that turn to cream in the dry. The paddocks in this film are somebody's paddocks. The dogs are somebody's dogs. Half the crowd in the trial scenes are the neighbours who turned up with a thermos and stayed all day.
Starring Graham McTavish and David Wenham. In New Zealand cinemas 5 November 2026.
