Ma-Mha

Ma-Mha (Thai: มะหมา 4 ขาครับ, or Ma-Mha 4 Ka Krub, also Mid-Road Gang) is a 2007 Thai comedy-drama film directed by Pantham Thongsang and Somkiet Vituranich about a pack of stray dogs in suburban Bangkok who want to cross a busy highway in hopes of finding a better life on the other side of the road. It is the first Thai live-action feature film to feature main characters that are animals.

Plot

Makham is a Thai Ridgeback living with his middle-class owner and girlfriend and the girlfriend's white Persian cat. After the cat tricks Makham into chewing on her master's shoes, the girlfriend becomes furious and when her boyfriend is gone, sneaks the dog off to a suburban Bangkok Buddhist temple, and leaves the dog.

Makham falls in a pack of five stray dogs who live in a burned out neighborhood. An illustrated sequence during the opening credits shows the lives of the strays and how their village came to be burned down. The five strays are led by an old mixed breed hound named Luang Kaffee. The other dogs are mostly mixed breed as well, except for a poodle named Sexy. The dogs are starving. They cannot forage for food in the nearby temple because of a rival pack of strays. A neighboring orchard is off limits because of some fierce guard dogs. And there is a gated, high-class housing estate, but the dogs are stopped from entering by a kindly young security guard.