Foxes In The Underground
2010 · 15m · UK
Directed by Daniel Nickson
Tones: contemplative, humorous
The director and producer of a small English news broadcasting station must set aside their differences to keep their jobs intact.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A deadpan fable about urban foxes that could've been twee eco-parable nonsense, but Nickson keeps refusing the easy emotional beats—there's a real subversive bite under the whimsy that most comedy-drama hybrids are too cowardly to earn.
The film's tonal control—balancing naturalistic observation with fabulist framing—shows formal discipline reminiscent of late-period Koreeda; the editing rhythm respects silence and digression in ways that separate confident craft from rushed indie work.
The decision to shoot the foxes as utterly indifferent to human presence, never playing them for cuteness or metaphor, is what makes this work—it's a single restraint that transforms what could be sentimental into something genuinely strange and unsettling.