Dancing Dogs of Dombrova, The

BAY AREA PREMIERE

Sarah and Aaron are two thirtysomething Canadian siblings with a mission. Their bubbe (grandmother) has entrusted them with a final request: to travel to Poland to exhume the remains of her long-dead family dog so she can be buried with its bones. The difficulty? Bubbe's home base lies in the remote inhospitable region of Dombrova, and neither sibling can speak a word of Polish-let alone civil English to each other. Which is a problem, because they have only each other to depend on as they navigate the foreign customs and characters. Aaron is a cynical, uptight hypochondriac with a face as straight as one of the fence planks lining Dombrova's bleak winter landscape. Sarah is more spontaneous and takes much amusement in the sundry villagers they encounter on their journey. This quirky and endearing comedy highlights a cast of characters that includes a stout and silent female cab driver who ferries the siblings all over town with a bottle of hot sauce in her glove compartment, a precocious teenage spy who accompanies them and a pregnant innkeeper with a penchant for cooking blood sausages and getting into spats with the town priest. Will these constantly bickering siblings manage to find the canine casket without driving each other into early graves of their own? - Zoë Pollak