Rob Munday
I like to think of myself as an understanding person, and as I’ve grown older I’ve come to see consideration not just as a personal value, but as a way of living – one I also hope to pass on to my children. That may sound like the opening line of a self-help book, but it serves a more specific purpose here: to frame the central tradition explored in Minha Kim’s (Sea Child, A Perfect Turn) darkly comic short For Fox Sake. That tradition is fox hunting, an activity I’ve always struggled to understand the rationale for.
“I came across a video of a man in a balaclava being whipped by a woman on horseback”
Kim’s film follows a protester who, after being assaulted while attempting to disrupt a fox hunt, finds shelter with a man who initially appears kind and accommodating. The director’s interest in the subject began when she “came across a video of a man in a balaclava being whipped by a woman on horseback.” While that image might sound like something stumbled upon in a particularly obscure corner of the internet, for Kim it was a genuine first encounter with the practice of fox hunting. That moment became the seed for a narrative that expands beyond the hunt itself, engaging instead with the broader experience of living in a world that feels increasingly polarised.
At the heart of For Fox Sake is a deceptively simple question. “If these people met in real life, away from the battleground, without knowing each other’s stance, would they actually get along?” Kim asks of her two central characters. This tension not only drives the film, it mirrors a wider social dilemma. Is it possible to find common ground, or even coexist peacefully, with those whose values and ways of life fundamentally clash with our own? The film offers no easy answers, but its strength lies in its willingness to sit with the discomfort of the question. In doing so, For Fox Sake approaches its subject with originality and provocation – qualities that will almost certainly divide opinion.
The film’s custom-made “doggy cam” in action.
A filmmaker we first featured on the site in 2016 with her NFTS short Sea Child – an experimental animation exploring a young girl on the cusp of womanhood – Kim has since shifted her focus toward live-action filmmaking. Her two most recent productions, For Fox Sake and A Perfect Turn, were both shot on 35mm, with the filmmaker admitting she wanted this film to have a “classical look”, reminiscent of British cult films such as Withnail and I and The Wicker Man.
Despite her prior experience working with 35mm, the shoot presented a number of technical challenges. One sequence in particular – the film’s opening, shot from the perspective of a dog – proved especially demanding. The scene required the construction of a custom camera rig – lovingly called “doggy cam” – built from scaffolding poles and mounted on a tilting baseplate, developed by her cinematographer Sverre Sørdal. A long-time collaborator, Sørdal has worked with Kim on all three of her previous shorts, as well as with Nick Rowland on Slap and Group B.
The film’s visual ambition extends beyond its cinematography, however, as Kim also commissioned bespoke terrier portraits featuring human eyes and teeth, and employed puppeteers to create what she describes as a “realistic yet oddly deranged” fox for the film’s final sequence. When taken altogether, these elements make For Fox Sake a clear marker of Kim’s expanding creative talent. With her debut feature currently in development, it seems safe to assume that her filmmaking future still holds more than a few surprises.