Man's best friend's best films: The Top Dog Film Festival comes to Canberra

The Top Dog Film Festival is back this year and will be taking over the National Film and Sound Archives for two nights on August 20 and 21.

Since 2017 the festival has been serving up the best in both amateur and paw-fessional short films on all things dogs.

Whittled down from more than 250 submissions from all over the world, the lean two-hour screening is made up of eight premium selections from Australia, the United States, Canada, France and New Zealand.

"It is definitely the hardest part of the job deciding what goes into the program," said festival director Jemima Robinson.

"But it's also a great part of the job, because it is all driven by the filmmakers and what stories they're choosing to tell. Every year is so completely different."

Now in its eighth year, the biggest change since Robinson started the festival has been the increase in offerings from Australian filmmakers.

With huge numbers of submissions coming from North America, China and India, local filmmakers are pushing through the pack in an effort to immortalise Aussie dogs on the silver screen.

"When we first started out it was very US-centric, whereas in recent years we've had a lot more films coming out of Australia and New Zealand, which is great to see because we get stories that really resonate with our audience."

One such story comes in the form of a film about Tasmanian artist Penny Ruthberg.

The Comforter tells of Ruthberg's journey as an artist who, informed by heavy grief and memories of the dogs of her past, started sculpting clay "comforters" - detailed figurines of dogs for the mantelpiece.

"I started making dogs from memory ... and in remembering those dogs and trying to formulate them in clay from memory, it was really not so much about likeness and much more about capturing the essence, and the feelings, and the memory of the feelings of those dogs," she said, in The Comforter.

"It has connected me with an amazing following of really loyal dog lovers. It's been a way of connecting with people I would never have found otherwise.

It's this sense of community and connection that Robinson is hoping will be abundant among the audience at the screening next month.

"For us it's as much about the films as it is a coming together of a community of dog lovers," she said.

"We want to take the audience on a journey, some highs and some lows, show them some stories they may not have seen before and give some insight into dogs' lives all around the world.

"It's like a big jigsaw puzzle, it's about what makes you feel good ... because dogs have a direct line to our hearts."

As a result, you'll never see a dog die on screen at the Top Dog Festival, with organisers saying they instead hope to highlight and emphasise the positive feelings and connection between dogs and their humans.

"It's a very family friendly event. We never kill the dog," Robinson said.

With winter crawling to an end and cold Canberrans thawing out ahead of the much-desired spring, the heart-warming offerings of these on-screen pups could be the perfect salve for weary eyes that just want to watch a nice story about a dog.