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Produced by H/3 Foundation and Gray Hat Productions and directed by award-winning filmmaker Mye Hoang, 25 Cats from Qatar is a gripping feature-length documentary of rescue heroism amidst an animal welfare crisis. Hoang turns her sharp eye and skillful camera on the Qatari street cat population, highlighting their plight and the brave work of the volunteers who seek to rescue them.
In the 1960s, cats were introduced in Doha in large numbers, in an attempt to control the growing rodent population. Now numbering in the millions, Doha’s stray cat population live, suffer and die on the city’s streets, enduring temperatures that regularly exceed 115°F, with almost no public infrastructure for their care. There are no major shelters, and spay and neuter programs are limited. Adoptions are rare in a country where roughly 90% of the population consists of expats who live locally only for fixed terms of employment and not for long-term residency.
What thin support for the animals exists is provided not by institutional actors, but by a passionate coalition of expats, locals and migrant workers, a network of good samaritans who absorb the responsibility at their own expense and out of a sense of empathy. 25 Cats from Qatar uses one small rescue by a daring, Milwaukee-based flight attendant and a coalition of local Doha volunteers to fly 25 street cats to new homes abroad, as a window into a far larger story of the animals left behind and the humans who refuse to look away. H/3 Foundation provided not only principal funding for the entire film, but also served as a valuable creative collaborator throughout the pre-production, principal photography and post-production phases.
