UNDERDOG
Film poster for "Underdog" with half man and half dog face on yellow background.
UNDERDOG
Film poster for "Underdog" with half man and half dog face on yellow background.
The curiously optimistic tale of Doug Butler—a hardscrabble Vermont dairy farmer who risks losing the only home he's ever known to chase his dreams of dog mushing in Alaska

UNDERDOG

Regular price $129.00
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NOMINEE - Grand Jury Prize - Slamdance Film Festival | OFFICIAL SELECTION - Camden International Film Festival

Mental Health • Cinema Vérité • Agriculture & Farming • Rural Issues

Date of Release: 2023 | Run Time: 82 minutes​​ | Language: English | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Director: Tommy Hyde | Executive Producer: Aaron Woolf | Writers: Tommy Hyde & Aaron Woolf | Co-Producer: Kyra Schaefer

Doug’s ease with cows, dogs and people is a joy to behold. And when he trains his team of mutts on the family farm with a dream to compete at the world championships in Alaska, his teenage exuberance seems to erase the tired lines on his sixty-five-year-old face. Yet the demands of being a small-scale family farmer are constant, and Doug has never once left his cows for more than a few days in his entire life. On a cold March morning, Doug pulls out of his driveway in a rusted-out truck carrying 22 dogs, tearily waving goodbye to the only world he’s ever known. He’s bound for Alaska. The journey will prepare him for what he’ll confront when he gets back—the sale of his farm and a race to craft a new destiny. Meticulously captured over the course of a decade, UNDERDOG paints an intimate vérité portrait of Doug as he puts a curiously optimistic twist on the kinds of family farm tragedies that have marked American rural life.

Becca Balint, US Representative for VT
"What Underdog illuminates so well is the emotional toll of being a farmer today and the deep resilience, optimism and joy that also comes with rural life."

Middlebury College | Jay Parini, Axinn Professor of English
"A gorgeously conceived paean to rural America and its characters..."

Underdog Film Review | FILM THREAT

A dog-sledding dairy farmer loses it all, races back stronger | WATERBURY ROUNDABOUT

How a local farmer became ‘Hollywood Doug’ | ADDISON INDEPENDENT

Dairy farmer’s Alaska sprint mushing dreams come true in new documentary ‘Underdog’ | AK PUBLIC MEDIA

Tommy Hyde’s ‘Underdog’ a Middlebury farmer holds his own | RUTLAND HERALD

The Camden International Film Festival Announces Its 2021 Hybrid Edition Lineup | FILMMAKER MAGAZINE

Slamdance Announces Film Lineup for 2022 Hybrid Festival | VARIETY