Ten years after release
A film by Heath Cozens
No pity… no mercy!
I want to fight well, win… go on a trip with my friends… and then ‘dot-dot-dot’.
Screenings
Doglegs is a film to watch with a crowd. Ten years after its release, it’s going back on the big screen as an event: the film, then a conversation with Heath.
Cinemas, festivals, universities and clubs. If you have a room and an audience, let’s talk.
Bring Doglegs to your city
The film
Watch the trailer
Own the filmSoon, with extras. Hear first by email.
In a renegade Tokyo pro-wrestling league called Doglegs, the disabled battle the able-bodied in the name of smashing stereotypes. After 20 years of glory, the group’s star dreams of life beyond the mat. But his mentor isn’t letting go without a fight…
Doglegs began in Tokyo in 1991 as a volunteer group for the disabled. A young Shintaro and another disabled man locked horns over a girl, a volunteer who’d been helping out. Egged on by the others, it came to blows.
It was more than a duel. It was an awakening: a reaction to the coddling, condescending expectations of polite society. Yukinori Kitajima, the group’s volunteer organizer, turned it into a wrestling league for the disabled.
Its wrestlers don’t hide their faults or imperfections, and they don’t let their differences define them. Everyone in the ring and behind it is a volunteer, fighting for self-actualization, not money.
Give me your best shot… and I’ll give you mine.
The people
The star of the show, and the film. After 20 years as Doglegs’ star fighter, he dreams of a respectable life beyond the ring, and of hooking up with a certain special lady. But before he can hang up his gloves, his friend and nemesis “Antithesis” Kitajima has a diabolical ultimatum…
The group’s volunteer leader: a searing intellect behind the scenes, and a brute in the ring. He’s touted as “the man who has beaten up the disabled for twenty years”. He believes that fighting the disabled without kid gloves is a sign of respect.
How do you get respect if your disability is invisible? Outwardly ‘normal’, but clinically depressed, Yuki Nakajima seeks recognition and respect. But depression and wrestling can be a volatile mix.
Cross-dressing legend L’Amant (“The Lover”) has severe cerebral palsy, for which he self-medicates, despite strict doctor’s orders to lay off the bottle. He’s promised his wife and son he’ll die in the ring. Mrs. L’Amant is torn between preserving his autonomy, or his life.
I’m… I’m in it… to win it.
In the press
Fearless, challenging, provocative, and touching in ways you will never see coming.
Always involving and sometimes deeply moving.
One of the most powerful blasts of empathy and humanity I’ve ever experienced.
The filmmaker
Multiple award-winning director. Former travelling puppeteer.
Heath grew up in New Zealand, where he worked as a travelling puppeteer teaching disability awareness, made short films and worked in TV. He graduated from Victoria University with a film degree in 1996 and moved to Japan that same year, producing, directing, shooting and editing news, documentaries and commercials. He came across Doglegs in 2009.
Now based in Los Angeles, he makes films about people who define reality on their own terms.
I want to be happy.
Make contact
When Doglegs played Fantastic Fest, I worried it would come across as a gross-out freak show for genre geeks. Instead, the audience saw themselves in it. That’s where the film found its people.
It has a lot of humour, a lot of love and a lot of high-minded fuckery. Ten years after its release, I want to share it again: on big screens, in lecture halls, with a conversation after.
If you have a room and an audience, or you just want to own the film, write to me.
Heath
