Writer-director Matt Branston on bringing Laika’s final days to the screen, shooting from a dog’s perspective, and using the 1957 space race to tell a deeply human story

The story of Laika, the Soviet space dog sent into orbit in 1957, has become one of the most haunting chapters in the history of space exploration. But in LITTLE BUG, writer-director Matt Branston deliberately moves away from the scale of the space race to focus on something much smaller: a fractured relationship between a father and his daughter.

Set on the eve of Laika’s historic launch, the short follows a scientist who brings the dog home to meet his young daughter in an attempt to repair their relationship. What begins as a story set against one of humanity’s great technological achievements becomes an intimate examination of grief, loneliness, family and the consequences of putting ambition before connection.

Branston, an award-winning filmmaker and graduate of the National Film and Television School, also made the unusual decision to tell the story entirely through an immersive first-person perspective, placing audiences alongside Laika and refusing to look away from the emotional reality of what happens to her.

Ahead of LITTLE BUG’s HollyShorts screening, Branston discusses why he wanted to make the space race feel small, the creative thinking behind the film’s perspective, working with Martin Freeman and Alexandra Barredo, and why he believes the most important journeys are ultimately the ones that bring us back to the people we love.

LITTLE BUG places an intimate family story against one of the most significant moments in space exploration. What drew you to the idea of exploring such a monumental historical event through a deeply personal father-daughter relationship?

Matt Branston: The thing that engages me in any story is the people. It isn’t interesting that we sent a rocket ship to the moon. It’s interesting that Neil Armstrong walked on it. The idea of tragedy being seen through two people’s connection meant we could actually see the detail of the event and not just the scale.

The father and daughter are so close and yet so far apart. They’ve never reconciled after experiencing grief, and now the father’s attempt to reach out actually drives them apart even more. By focusing on their relationship, we see the individual, dramatic stakes that come with loneliness, isolation, and the importance of reaching out to people and forming those connections.

Laika’s whole life is her being left out in the cold, being left to die. She spends her whole life wanting to be wanted, being a stray dreaming of another life, and yet the only time she found home was the day before she died.

Being able to really feel that tragedy through the father and daughter, through their own grief, felt like the only way to really make this story feel real. The film is taking this massive event, the space race, the Cold War, and instead making it intimate, and small, and human for a second. In doing so, it becomes universal, making it about the connections we need and the difficulties we will always have in finding the truth required to form them.

The film unfolds through an immersive first-person perspective, placing audiences directly into the protagonist’s experience. What inspired that creative choice, and how did it shape the storytelling and emotional connection with the audience?

Branston: I had never seen a first-person film at this point — Nickel Boys came out a few months after filming — so for me there was something very exciting and new about trying this format.

There were two key reasons we went in that direction. Firstly, it’s much cheaper and easier to film from a dog’s perspective rather than actually hiring a dog. As a producer, this deeply excited my bank account.

The second reason, and the more important one, is that when I was young, I used to tell my dog everything I felt. He was my therapist. The intimacy a dog has within a family, the proximity and closeness, felt like an incredible thing to allow the audience to experience.

It also felt like a way for the actors to be really honest, almost performing these beautiful little Shakespearean soliloquies, without ever asking the audience how or why it was possible.

It truly shaped the story and the storytelling by making it imperative to focus on Laika’s experience. We never leave her to see the family talk, and we never hide from how much pain and fear she felt in the rocket. It demanded absolute honesty from us in terms of the story and allowed us to honour Laika in the way she deserves.

At its heart, the film explores the tension between professional ambition and personal responsibility. Why did that conflict resonate with you, and what universal questions were you hoping to explore through it?

Branston: Something I’ve always found very difficult is the willingness I have to sacrifice parts of myself or my happiness for work. I absorb a lot of what I’m working on, and when those things are affecting me, it affects everyone around me too.

It often means not replying to friends, being a less considerate partner, and I think it’s very sincerely a deeply negative and bad trait I have. I think it’s so important for us to be loving to each other, to care about each other, and unfortunately in the pursuit of something, it’s very easy to forget that.

It is pretty universal that we all have these deep desires, whether for love, for money, for success, for a passion. But we’re all in this together and it’s not fair to take the repercussions of those desires, or our anger at not getting them, out on others.

I think it’s important in the film that the Dad character doesn’t have to sacrifice anything. He just has to be honest, both literally, but also emotionally. I think it’s a good lesson for anyone.

Laika’s story has become a powerful symbol of sacrifice in the history of space exploration. How did you approach incorporating such an iconic historical figure while ensuring the film remained focused on the human relationships at its centre?

Branston: In making this film, I never felt we should treat Laika as anything other than another character in the film. I think to canonise her within the film would not have done justice to her reality and her tragic death.

She was a tiny little dog. She probably shivered in the wind and had little whiskers on her chin.

In treating her like this, we could keep all the intimacy of the three central characters, because they were all just going through their own struggles. The humans didn’t see her, or each other, as anything other than creatures in pain. By doing that, we could truly feel the love they had for each other, the yearning to help one another, and the inability most of them had to do anything.

I don’t think it’s fair to refer to Laika’s death as sacrifice. She didn’t choose her ending and never understood it. But in choosing to focus on her reality, on her relationships, on the beauty she hopefully found in the world, it felt the best way to incorporate her without merely using her.

Martin Freeman and Alexandra Barredo bring remarkable emotional nuance to the film. What drew you to them for these roles, and how did you work together to capture the quiet complexity of a fractured family?

Branston: Alex is the kind of actor who you see for two seconds and you know she’s a star. I had worked with her before and knew the next chance we got to work together I’d take it because she is so thoughtful and considerate. She is able to craft a character with a glance or a tiny movement and I don’t even know if it’s intentional, but the result is completely reality transmitted to the audience.

Similarly, the most impressive thing about Martin Freeman is that when filming a scene, you completely forget it’s this actor you’ve loved your entire life. He has this incredible ability to bring emotions you would never think, even as a director, that the character should have. But in those choices, he creates a person so realised and truthful that they could have been plucked out of the 1950s and dropped straight into the film.

I had such faith in them to portray these characters, and they were such joys to work with on the day.

In terms of crafting the family dynamic, I think what really helped us was understanding space. Regardless of the actual proximity, there is a huge amount of emptiness between the characters at first.

We discussed the film feeling almost like a Western — these big pauses and gaps, this vast horizon always present, even though the actual setting is a flat and a field. When the characters hug, finally acknowledging each other’s needs, it isn’t just emotional because of the emotions. It works because that distance has been breached and they can finally be there for each other.

When you have two actors like this, that is all you need.

Your films consistently explore themes of love, identity, and human connection. Looking across your body of work, what is it about intimate, character-driven stories that continues to inspire your filmmaking?

Branston: I think fundamentally all we have is each other. We all want so many things, but none of it means anything alone.

I think there’s something so beautiful, so vital, to the desire we have to find those people that matter to us. I think a lot of life is found in those moments of saying “I love you,” even if you’re not using the words themselves.

For me, making films is about creating a feeling for the audience. Creating something experiential. And there’s nothing more potent than the feeling of longing and belonging, especially in terms of yourself.

When people go home, they think about the characters they’ve seen, the stories they’ve watched, and it changes them. It changes how they think and who they are, and it makes them feel.

I think there’s no greater way to do that than telling a really truthful, sincere story that makes people feel like they’re part of something. The scale doesn’t matter, just the feeling. I hope to keep doing it.

Recreating 1950s Soviet Russia while maintaining emotional intimacy is an ambitious balance to strike. How did you collaborate with your creative team to build a world that feels historically authentic without losing sight of the personal story?

Branston: It’s so important for the audience that when watching a film, the world feels truthful to the story. For a sci-fi film, that can mean aliens and spaceships, but for us, that meant pots and pans on the wall.

One of the joys of this film was collaborating for the third time with my production designer and friend Matthieu Levy. He has such a keen insight and is able to beautifully realise worlds with such detailed research that even Martin wanted to have a full chat with him about it.

Similarly, when working with my cinematographer, Jake Duncan, we decided early on to shoot it in 4:3, both to create this anxious feeling of Laika’s future closing in, but also to replicate classic Soviet television and classic Soviet filmmaking of the era.

It creates this feeling of watching what the people there would be watching, even if it’s not immediately obvious. Similarly, the film has a real balance between warm, rich tones inside and the cold of the outside. This signals a nostalgic quality we wanted to evoke without necessarily making it obvious.

All these small elements, like the car being an authentic Soviet-era Dacia, allowed us to create this bedding on which the audience could lie down and be absorbed by the emotions of the story.

Luckily, we had the team there to build it. I haven’t even spoken about the absolutely sublime, almost subliminal work of the post-production team — Olivier Jones, Charli Mackie and Nick Smyth — to evoke those 1950s atmospheres.

Really, for me, I don’t think it was ever about creating a balance, but more a necessity. The audience will never believe in the emotions if the world doesn’t feel truthful. But once it did, we could grapple with those emotions in the most sincere and honest ways possible.

LITTLE BUG has already been recognised at international festivals and will now screen at HollyShorts. Looking back on the film’s journey, what has surprised you most about the way audiences have connected with its themes, and what do you hope they take away after experiencing the film?

Branston: Maybe the most surprising part of the film’s journey to me has been how many people have highlighted themes I hadn’t considered.

For me, it’s been such a joy to see people find moments of importance, things that matter to them, in the narrative, and it truly speaks to the way that film lives and breathes on its own rather than just being in the ownership of its creators.

My dream is that when people walk out of the cinema, they’ll stop for a second, look up at the stars and think about their friends seeing the same stars. Their family, their loved ones.

They’ll see them in the sky and realise what a beautiful world it is, and maybe reach out to the people they love and say something that means something to them.

And hopefully they’ll think about the little dog that never got to experience that, and they’ll hug their friends a little bit harder in her honour.