Two films bear the cute and cuddly title Space Dogs. Incidentally, both are Russian; their similarities end there. One is an 2010 animated movie your preschoolers are likely to love.

The other is a documentary that will traumatize them for life. And perhaps you, too.

I chose to be enchanted. Co-directors Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter posit that the dilapidated streets of Moscow are haunted by the ghost of Laika, the stray dog that became the superstar of the Soviet Union’s space program when launched into an ill-fated orbit in 1957. To that end, their camera follows current-day strays going about their business, which entails a lot of sitting (and results in some beautifully composed shots) and scavenging for food. In one of the film’s more memorable and disturbing scenes, hungry canines murder a cat for a daytime snack.

Interspersed with this you-are-there “story” is historical footage of Laika’s mission — not just her launch, either, but the preparation the poor mongrel had to endure. Let’s just say it’s surgical and leave it at that.

With the sparsest of narration, Space Dogs is not your “normal” documentary. Lyrical and meditative, it sits snugly alongside experimental docs as 2012’s Leviathan or Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 masterwork, Koyaanisqatsi. While I remain unsure of Kremser and Peter’s ultimate point, the richness of their visuals is too striking to ignore, especially those frames shot at that time of year when the night sky takes on a purplish haze as the city lights dilute the darkness. Never has ugliness looked so beautiful. —Rod Lott