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When faced with the horrors of war day after day, soldiers need to find a way to cope with the trauma. The wartime drama The Fox (Der Fuchs), tells the true story of one lonely young soldier and the unusual friendship that helped him find peace through his time in the war.
The Fox tells the story of Franz Streitberger (Simon Morzé) and his unlikely wartime companion. Born in the mountains of Austria, Franz was sent away to a nearby farmer when he was just a boy. When he came of age in the late 1930s, he found himself without a home—but the army promised food and shelter, so he enlisted. When he found an injured fox cub in the forest, he decided to nurse it back to health, secretly carrying it with him through the army’s occupation in France and finding comfort in this unexpected friendship.
As the soldier and his secret pet travel through Europe together, viewers will fall in love with both of them. Franz is a lovable character, and Simon Morzé gives a strong performance, bringing the character to life—complete with his awkwardness and insecurities—without a lot of dialogue. After spending his life working on a stranger’s farm, this anxious young man doesn’t really know what it’s like to have friends or family. He doesn’t have stories to tell, and he doesn’t know how to make small talk—so he struggles to fit in with the other soldiers in his unit. But caring for the fox changes everything for him. It gives him a close relationship that he hasn’t had since his family sent him away—and a way to escape from the fear and suffering and death all around him. The film doesn’t show much of the actual battle, but it doesn’t need to. Its focus is on Franz—and the way that this friendship helps him heal from the pain of his past and his present.
While war movies are generally heavy—and sometimes even oppressively so—that’s not really the case here. Instead, it tells a sweet story of something unexpected that came out of the horrors of war and the challenges of life as a soldier—and the way that it changed this young man’s life.
The Fox definitely isn’t the traditional war movie—big and noisy and violent. Instead, it’s lighter and surprisingly sweet—a simple character study of an awkward young man and the wild animal that helped him start to connect with the world (and the people) around him.
You can join Franz and his fox on their wartime journey when The Fox comes to AppleTV and Prime Video on March 22, 2024.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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