For Fox Sake
2024 · 21m · UK
Directed by Minha Kim
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, provocative, tense
A dark comedy about an animal rights activist who, after being assaulted while trying to disrupt a fox hunt, takes shelter with an apparently kind groundsman — only to discover his host is a terrier man with unsettling secrets.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
16mm with a scaffolding-pole 'doggy cam' rig, refusing to take sides on fox hunting — that ambivalence is the harder, more honest choice. Film4 / WePresent backing usually means craft, and the Wicker Man comparison isn't entirely wishful.
35mm with a custom doggy-cam rig, Film4 and WePresent backing, and an explicit refusal to take sides on fox hunting puts this in the Andrea Arnold tradition of rural British discomfort. The refusal to moralize is the formal achievement.
35mm with a custom-built 'doggy cam' rig made from scaffolding poles is the kind of bespoke camera engineering that earns its visual signature — 21:08, Film4/WePresent backing, and a real refusal to take sides on the politics. Withnail-meets-Wicker-Man is a serious lineage to claim and the page suggests they earned it.
Reviews
The film offers no easy answers, but its strength lies in its willingness to sit with the discomfort of the question. For Fox Sake approaches its subject with originality and provocation — qualities that will almost certainly divide opinion.
Festivals
- HollyShorts Film Festival 2024