Drawing on a true-crime story that fascinated Italy in the 1980s, Matteo Garrone’s Dogman centres on Marcello (Marcello Fonte, who won the Best Actor prize at Cannes), a devoted single father who scrapes out a living by grooming dogs, and selling cocaine on the side. His best customer, Simoncino (Edoardo Pesce), is a hulking former boxer who deploys brutal violence when confronted by any situation he doesn’t like. 

Marcello’s mild manners and logic have an oddly taming effect on the bullish Simoncino, until their tentative friendship is suddenly hurled into an unexpected (and bloody) direction.