Prince is used to getting the royal treatment. But the award-winning show dog, an Afghan hound, becomes a driver for all sorts of crazy machinations in a cinematic and absurdist battle royal full of black humor that ensues in Uruguayan director and screenwriter Federico Borgia’s solo feature debut, which is simply entitled Prince.

Beyond the best-in-show dog, the movie stars his owner, her butler and their extended family. The setting: the fading seaside luxury of Punta del Este.

Prince, starring Roberto Suárez (The Saint), Maitina De Marco (27 Nights), Esteban Bigliardi (27 Nights) and more, gets its world premiere at the 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF) on Thursday, Oct. 8. Alpha Violet is handling sales for the highly stylized film.

Since Prince becomes the main prize in a ruthless custody battle, the festival website describes the Uruguayan-Argentine co-production as a “kitsch comedy about avarice and love.” And class divides also play a key role.

“At the heart of the film is Jaime (Suárez), a former lover turned live-in butler to Isabel (De Marco), an affluent Argentine woman with whom he has shared two decades in an expansive coastal villa,” reads a synopsis. “Their peculiar domestic routine revolves around Isabel’s prize-winning Afghan Hound, Prince. When Isabel dies unexpectedly in her swimming pool, her will reveals an absurd condition: her entire luxury estate has been left to Prince, with Jaime appointed as his guardian. Isabel’s human relatives can only claim the property once the dog dies.”

So when Isabel’s estranged son and granddaughter move in, intent on finding a way to oust the dog, Jaime tries to protect Prince while being forced to confront Diego, his own estranged son, and a past he has long avoided. The resulting tension turns the villa into a claustrophobic pressure cooker.

Borgia, who previously co-directed Clever (2015) and The Champion of the World (2019) with Guillermo Madeiro, talked to THR about how Prince draws on his own experience living in Punta del Este and a childhood fascination with show dogs, as well as the cinematic atmosphere he crafted.

Watch a trailer for Prince right here.

The inspiration for Prince came from the filmmaker’s life. “It was very much influenced because I moved from Montevideo to Punta del Este. It’s a touristic coast town where social classes mix up – there’s this working class and this class that pays for services,” Borgia tells THR. “There is this mix of glamor and decadence that started surrounding me, and I started a game of observation. I started looking at people in different places and writing down things I saw and then started an imaginative game of questions about what was behind what I was seeing.”

The show dog seed was planted at an earlier age, though, he recalls. “When I was a kid, I had this nice dog that was given to me when I was 10,” Borgia explains. “And I remember going, with my mother, to this dog groomer [to trim the dog’s hair]. He didn’t participate in dog shows, but at this grooming place, I saw these pictures of contests with these guys in suits posing. They looked like lawyers, but with a dog.”

The creative started to mesh up these real-life elements with “this story of this inheritance thing,” Borgia recalls.

The character he conceived as a protagonist is in an unusual, some may even say uncomfortable, position. “He’s a worker who met this lady in some kind of service relationship, and then he became her lover, and that started this undefined point between being a lover, partner, butler. It’s really undefined as you start discovering, and then all the other relationships and bonds and all the problems that come with them and family come into the film.”

Finding the cast was a mix of asking people he had long admired and finding faces he wasn’t as familiar with, Borgia tells THR.

“Roberto Suárez, who plays Jaime, is someone I have wanted to work with for a long time, and he accepted really fast,” the filmmaker shares. “I really admire him, not only as an actor, but also as a great theater creator. So I really wanted to work with him throughout the [creative] process. He was reading different versions of the script and throwing out ideas, and they were always brilliant ideas. He’s also a great person.”

To find cast in Argentina, Borgia started exploring opportunities through castings, asking people and watching movies. “So, there were different parts and approaches to the casting process, and I am very happy with the cast I found,” he concludes.

Did the dog actor ever cause any challenges on set? “The dog was always perfect,” shares Borgia. “We never had a problem with the dog.” Except for that one time when things got hairy. “Just one time, he fell into the pool, and we had to dry his hair for two or three hours,” he says.

And no, the director didn’t choose an Afghan hound for its reputation for trainability but its aesthetics, its look. “I actually started investigating on the internet how to train a dog,” Borgia says. “And the Afghan hound was really low on the list of trainable dogs, well below the Border Collie, the German Shepherd and others.”

But the creative team met a man who lives with eight Afghan hounds. “There’s another film in that,” Borgia tells THR with a smile. “But he told us that Afghans are difficult, but he has one dog who is really young and different. He said he is like a Labrador in the body of an Afghan. He was really social and really calm.”

For Borgia, the story of Prince may unfold in a specific setting, but he expects audiences in various parts of the world will recognize key themes and issues that the movie explores. “The story itself is universal, but the most important thing for me was the characters and their relationship, and the tone of the film. I felt I could make it different. The original thing is how an author can make the premise of a film different.”

What’s next for Borgia? “I want to talk about it, but I have no clue,” he tells THR. “Every time I finish a film, I really don’t know if I’m going to make another one. Or at least that’s how I feel. But I know I will because it’s like an addiction. You know you’re going to fall into it again.”