CHRISTIE PITS FILM FESTIVAL
Sunday, July 9, 2023

Fantastic Mr. Fox

With the short films Foxed! and Hedgehog’s Home

Known for his meticulously and artfully constructed miniature worlds in live action films, stop motion animation was a logical step for indie auteur Wes Anderson. One of his finest films, Fantastic Mr. Fox imagines a parallel subterranean world where foxes, badgers, weasels and rats outwit, outplay and outlast human farmers in hopes of laying claim to the finest treasures of farm life. After the reckless Mr. Fox and a ragtag multi-species crew of co-conspirators mount a series of daring heists on the local farmers, their incursions into the dangerous world of humans result in a catastrophic backlash and they are forced to go on the run. Loosely adapted from the beloved children’s novel, Anderson’s animal characters bristle with personality, thanks to incredibly detailed animation and production design, an A-list cast including George Clooney, Willem Dafoe, and Meryl Streep, and an unconventional approach to voice acting in which performers recorded on location rather than in studio. 

Accompanying the feature are two critically acclaimed stop motion shorts led by sly foxes. James E.D. Stewart and Nev Bezaire’s Foxed! puts a sinister spin on the theme, depicting a young girl’s desperate attempts to outwit a malevolent skulk of foxes. In Hedgehog’s Home, Croatian-Canadian animator Eva Cvijanović creates a whole woodland world of felted wool to adapt a classic children’s story about a stalwart hedgehog who must defend his home from a bear, a wolf, a boar, and (of course) a wily fox. What does the fox say? “Don’t miss this show!”