Stay in a shopping mall for a whole week without getting kicked out by security? Sounds like an initiation rite for a fraternity pledge, but in 2003 it became an all-consuming immersive project for eight artists in Providence, Rhode Island, that stretched on beyond the initial prank for four years.

We’ve all been there; we can watch countless humans die in films without batting an eye, but the moment a dog dies, the tears start streaming. Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Friend offers a fresh take on the classic dog movie, where instead of a human grappling with the death of a dog, we see a dog facing the loss of his human.