again. They all travel in a car to a large meetup of dog fighters, where Sivas once again wins. On the way back home, Aslan declares Sivas won't fight again. He is told Sivas was meant to be a fighter, so he must. Cast Doğan İzci as Aslan Çakır as Sivas Hasan Özdemir as Hasan Ezgi Ergin as Ayşe Furkan Uyar as Osman Ozan Çelik as Şahin Banu Fotocan as mother Hasan Yazılıtılaş as father Okan Avcı as teacher Production While the film features several dog fights, none were harmed during their production. A combination of audio clips collected from real dog fights, shaky camera movement, tranquilizing the dogs harmless, and fake blood were used to film them. The crew applied lotion to the dog’s teeth to prevent real bites, and dosed them with alcohol-infused liquid to slow them down, preventing them from hurting one another. Moreover, the fight scenes were carefully choreographed, and make-up was layered in to create the illusion of continuity. The production company coined the idea to actually have a lot of backup dogs—up to 15, but I treated these dogs as characters with their own personalities, so I wanted to go with only one single dog on this film. When it came time to make Sivas, Müjdeci scouted close to 1,000 kids from the region, ultimately selecting his two leads just three days before filming began. Reception Sivas was widely acclaimed by critics with a particular praise for the performance of the main actor and realistic style of the director. The non-judgmental stance on the world of underground dog-fighting prompted some boos at Venice 2014 but the film has already won a Jury Prize and a Best Actor Prize in the Venice Film Festival, a Best Actor and Child Protection Award in ADFF, among many others around the world. Critic Nina Rothe said, "Sivas should be watched because of the same, favorite leitmotif of mine, a reason I watch and write about films. It deals with "the Other" this figure of an individual—or a whole people as we are so fond of doing these days, group everyone together—whom we think is so very different from us, we'll never be able to meet in the middle. Instead Sivas shows this alien, this foreigner, the person we are so incredibly afraid of as a boy who plays the same games we played as children, likes hide and