PRESS RELEASE: "UNDERDOG" comes to Streaming & DVD April 2, 2024!

Doug Butler is a hardscrabble Vermont dairy farmer with an offbeat passion – dog mushing. A local folk hero, Doug’s ease with cows, dogs and people is a joy to behold. And when he trains his team of mutts on the family farm with a dream to compete at the world championships in Alaska, his teenage exuberance seems to erase the tired lines on his sixty-five year old face. Meticulously captured over the course of a decade, Underdog
paints an intimate vérité portrait of Doug Butler as he puts a curiously optimistic twist on the family farm tragedies that have so marked American rural life. The resonance of Doug’s journey extends to all who have faced down loneliness, isolation and the struggle to make sense of forces beyond control.

"Tommy Hyde’s heartwarming documentary traces the life of an aging Vermont dairy farmer. Hyde’s subtlety as a filmmaker, along with the fabulous, eccentric central figure, bring to mind David Lynch’s The Straight Story. Both films are remarkable for how seemingly unremarkable they are. Stick with it, and the film’s subliminal power will sneak up on you."
-Alex Saveliev, FILM THREAT

"Underdog is much more than an immersion into the grim realities of life on a small Vermont dairy farm. It is a celebration of the kind of grit, humor, passion, optimism, and resilience that is needed to make such a life work. You’re going to just love this film and its forward-looking ending."
-Richard Alaniz, KPFK Film Club

Biographies of Film Crew

Tommy Hyde (Director, Camera, Editor) is a documentary filmmaker whose work explores people and stories at the fringes of society. Underdog, a film ten years in the making, is his directorial debut. He frequently collaborates with Mosaic Films, and is currently in production on two docu-series with them as a producer and writer. He is a graduate of Middlebury College and resides in Burlington, VT.

Aaron Woolf (Producer & Writer) is a Rockie, Logie and Peabody award-winning documentary filmmaker who tells stories that depict the human dimension of government policy. His work has been released theatrically in the US, Europe and Japan and broadcast on PBS, the Sundance Channel, and numerous international networks including RAI, ARTE, and SBS. Aaron is active in community and conservation efforts in New York’s Adirondack North Country, and in 2014 he was the Democratic nominee for Congress from the New York’s 21st district.

Kyra Schaefer (Co-Producer) is a NY-based documentary producer and editor whose work centers around the intersection of faith and feminism. She holds a B.A. in digital media and video production from Marymount Manhattan College. She is the co-producer of The Happening (in production) and Ordinary Saints (in production), both Mosaic Films Productions.