Director and cameraman
Dmitry Shpilenok
Project Producer
Anna Shpilenok
Shpilenok film.
We are Shpilenok Film – a documentary studio about the nature.
The film “FIERY FOX” is a real challenge. The filming is carried out on the territory of the reserve, and there are strict rules for people. In order not to increase the load on the protected area and not to cause stress for wild animals, we have limited the number of people doing the most important work in the project – video and photography.
Dmitry Shpilenok:
Many years ago I flew to Kamchatka with a dream to make a documentary about foxes. But, instead, my first documentary portrayed the lives of bears — animals that are, alas, too straightforward to love with all your heart. But foxes! They are charismatic, intelligent, canny characters — ready every minute to deceive you and, as I often joke, foxes do not want to eat me.
Long before this project began, I understood that it would take several years for the story of foxes to become honest, real, and true.
I went on the first expedition in 2019, and the filming started in spring 2020. That first season, we spent 7 months in the wild. A year later we plucked up the courage to spend 12 months immersed in film observation — from winter to winter.
Why are we committing so much time to make this film? We want to show the real stories and personalities of foxes who live in the wild. To do this, you need to live through their joys and losses, you need to see how their lives develop, and you need to settle next to them in their wild world.
Even foxes are sometimes surprised by our persistence. Watching us, they seem to chuckle at how we pour water out of our boots after
a rainstorm, tremble in three jackets when the weather is bad, arrive before dawn and leave after sunset. For them we are strange, funny creatures, poorly prepared for life outside of civilization. And so some moments become priceless when wilderness, where the rules are cruel and everything struggles for survival, begins to open up and trust us — people who over the past centuries have become complete strangers to the wild.
Three years living with foxes in their natural habitat gave us a challenge and an opportunity to learn something: each animal has its character, its destiny, and its right to exist — as much as we have that right. Extinction of animal species, like most high-profile crimes, occurs without much publicity. According to tragic statistics, every year more species of animals go extinct. Homo sapiens lose their sapience, their intelligence, in their over-consumption. But we sincerely believe there are “civilized” people who share our ideas. And our honest fox tales show how beautiful the inhabited planet is and shows that true freedom doesn’t begin where we usually look.
Dmitry Shpilenok, director and cameraman
