No Pets

Shot on a shoestring budget in Pittsburgh, this is a perceptive, unpatronising and compassionate study of a blue-collar worker struggling through in the face of inevitable disappointments. Episodic in structure, it follows Eddie (Amplas), a factory machinist, a single man, and owner of a mongrel that his landlady wants shot of. What happens to a guy like this, stuck in a dead-end job when his high-school pals went off to college, left to contemplate the might-have-beens over a beer with the guys from work? There are no false promises or fake uplift here, just an honest stare into the face of some uncomfortable home truths.