Roxy & The Man: Healing Hearts, One Pawprint at a Time

Can love still find us when we’ve run out of reasons to keep going? Joey Medina’s ''Roxy & The Man'' answers that question with a quiet, unshakable yes.

In this tender short, a terminally ill Vietnam veteran stumbles upon a stray dog abused, abandoned, and just as broken as he is. What follows isn’t just a rescue but a redemption. Through Medina’s lens, the companionship between man and animal becomes an act of defiance against despair, a reminder that even in the dimmest corners of life, connection can still flicker back to life.

Medina, whose own story is one of grit and reinvention, infuses Roxy & The Man with something you can’t fake: honesty. His direction carries a circular rhythm, one of his emerging trademarks, where beginnings and endings blur, and healing doesn’t arrive with fireworks but with quiet acceptance. The performances, too, are grounded and moving. The veteran’s weariness feels lived-in, not performed.

The script, like the man at its center, doesn’t shout to be seen. Medina’s storytelling thrives on understatement; every pause and silence feels intentional, as if the film itself is taking a deep breath after a lifetime of holding it in.

Visually, Roxy & The Man plays it a little too safe. The cinematography, while functional, never fully captures the emotional weight that the story deserves it’s flat where it could have been lyrical. Yet even so, the warmth of the performances and the heart of the narrative illuminate what the frame doesn’t. Because truly, light in this story doesn’t come from the camera it comes from the connection itself.

Medina’s personal fingerprints are all over this film. It’s both a love letter and an elegy to his own late dog, Roxy, and to every lost soul who ever found purpose in something smaller, softer, and kinder than themselves.

Gentle, heartfelt, and unmistakably human. Even the simplest stories can carry the heaviest truths.