"Highly intellectually engaging and provocative and also emotionally wrecking … one feels sad experiencing it, but it's so wonderful one simply can't be sad that it's in the world." – RogerEbert.com

For musician, filmmaker and performance artist Laurie Anderson, the death of her beloved rat terrier Lolabelle was a moment of deep personal crisis. Coming soon after the death of Anderson's similarly beloved husband, Lou Reed, Lolabelle's passing represented a transition into a world and life marked by the ebbing of time, the persistence of memory and the spectre of our own mortality.

Heart of a Dog is Anderson's captivating response to that crisis: a rapturous, swirling and wryly humorous mix of home movies, animation, CCTV footage, Buddhist philosophy and dog videos – all soundtracked by a score Anderson composed herself – that tries to answer the question of what it means to be alive in the 21st century. At times both whimsical and profound, sentimental and heartbreaking, Heart of a Dog is a love letter to a pooch that could be the wisest, most moving rumination on life and death you'll see this year.

"Anderson's film moves and feels like an album, variations on a theme coursing in waves of emotion and feeling, an experience that's both free associative and rigorously controlled." – Reverse Shot