Wild Foxes is a quality boxing coming of age drama.
Winner at the Cannes 2025 Directors Fortnight, Valery Carnoy’s film is a relevatory experience about the male ideology in the domain of pugilism.
At a sports boarding school, talented young boxer Camille narrowly survives a fatal accident, saved by his best friend Matteo. After a swift recovery, an inexplicable pain gradually takes hold of him, threatening his dreams of greatness and his relationship with the team. In the ring and in a man’s world, there’s no room for weakness.
Camille (Samuel Kircher) has talent but then so does everyone at the school, he is singled out as an individual for glory starting with the European Amateur Boxing championships. Being in a boarding school though, brings it’s own challenges against the monotony of routine and the seclusion of being cut off. One day he takes a walk to a nearby quarry, he walks a steep cliff face and then an accident leads to a serious injury jeopardising his hopes and dreams of the European Championships in a few months time.
Camille returns to training and then a pain starts to take hold of him – this pain is more mental and yet doctor’s say he is fine to continue physically speaking. This show of weakness is not something he should be displaying in such a macho sport as boxing.
His peers have no such injuries and in their youth cannot sympathise with his predicament. Along with this he encounters a female Taekwondo competitor who also plays trumpet, their flirting leads to a bond that may also disrupt the bromance and manosphere the young male boxers co-exist in.
Wild Foxes is as much about choices made at an early age as much about discovering what you are good at at that same age; what happens after school for these boys, what other skills have they learnt apart from boxing and combat. What else is on offer to them in the world come adulthood? You still have time to decide upon what the future holds and not be pressed upon by coaches, in a way this is a kindred spirit film to Billy Elliot. There Billy rebels by excelling in something, here Camille does not want to be defined by his excellence in one domain.
Indebted to the trailblazing works of contemporaries the Dardennes in its up close almost intrusive style, the film acts as an awakening of both the subject and a breakout for the performers, Kircher especially holds the narrative attention throughout with his quietly stoic role. Faycal Anaflous, as his friend Matteo, also grabs eyes when he is on screen with his brooding performance.
Wild Foxes is out on limited release from Conic Films on Friday 1st May.
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