In Wild Foxes, rising French actor Samuel Kircher delivers an arresting performance as Camille, a gifted teenage boxer navigating the fragile boundary between strength and vulnerability. Set within the intense, insular world of a competitive sports boarding school, the Belgian-French drama follows Camille as his promising future begins to unravel after a near-fatal accident leaves him grappling with a mysterious, persistent pain.
Directed by Valéry Carnoy, winner of the best European Film at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, the film resists the conventions of a traditional sports narrative. Boxing is portrayed as a physical language through which deeper questions of identity, masculinity and emotional repression are explored. What emerges is a raw, intimate coming-of-age story that stays with you long after the credits roll.
For Kircher, the role marks a striking evolution following his breakout performance in Last Summer (2023).
“For Last Summer, it was the first time I was in a film – it was just about trying to do it,” he reflects. That experience, guided by director Catherine Breillat, was rooted in precision and visual composition, with references to Renaissance painting shaping the film’s aesthetic. “We were in very specific positions… trying to find the scenes within those frames.”
Wild Foxes, by contrast, offered something more instinctive. Working alongside a largely non-professional cast – many of whom were real boxers – Kircher was immersed in an environment that blurred the line between performance and lived experience.
“All of the young actors were doing their first feature… some had never acted before. We had 23 days of rehearsal, which is very rare. It gave us time to discover things together.”
That sense of discovery is embedded in the film itself. Camille is not a neatly defined character, but a contradiction: strong yet sensitive, admired yet withdrawn. Kircher’s performance leans into this ambiguity, drawing from a deeply physical understanding of the role.
“When you’re young, you’re like an animal,” he says. “You have all these sensations, and you don’t know how to respond to them yet.”
This idea of adolescence as something almost animalistic runs throughout the film. It’s reflected not only in the characters, but in the recurring imagery of foxes, which quietly mirror the shifting dynamics between Camille and his closest friend. For Kircher, the symbolism is tied to a broader theme of release.
He mentions The Beatles’ song Let it be: “The film is about ‘let it be’… and what is more ‘let it be’ than nature?” he says. “There is no pressure, no frustration. Things just exist and evolve.”
That sense of freedom stands in stark contrast to the rigid, competitive world the boys inhabit – a space where strength is currency and vulnerability is suppressed.
To convincingly inhabit that world, Kircher underwent months of intensive boxing training, despite having no prior experience.
“One year before the film, I told a friend we should go to a boxing club,” he recalls with a smile. “He went… but I didn’t. But I had that will.” Once cast, that curiosity became commitment. Training nearly five times a week, he worked closely with a coach who approached boxing as both a physical and emotional discipline.
“My coach worked with young people who had difficulties – it was an educational process,” he explains. “He would send me videos, tell me stories… it wasn’t just about technique, it was about understanding the world of boxing.”
That immersion pays off onscreen. The fight sequences feel immediate and unpolished, capturing not just the choreography of the sport, but the vulnerability of the bodies within it. Yet for Kircher, the transformation was temporary.
“I completely stopped boxing after the film,” he laughs. “I lost all the muscle I got for the movie.”
If the physical demands of the role were intense, the emotional complexity proved equally challenging. One of the film’s most compelling elements is its refusal to clearly define the source of Camille’s pain. Is it physical, the lingering result of trauma? Or psychological, a manifestation of internal conflict?
“It was hard,” Kircher admits. “At the beginning, he really thinks something is broken. But then everyone tells him it’s anxiety, that it’s psychosomatic.” Rather than settling on a single interpretation, the actor embraced that uncertainty. “It’s difficult to make the difference… and that’s what makes it interesting.”
In preparing for these scenes, Kircher and the cast drew from shared conversations about anxiety and physical distress. “Everyone was giving their own experiences,” he says. “We created it together.” The result is a portrayal that feels both deeply personal and universally recognisable – a body reacting to pressures it cannot fully articulate.
That pressure is closely tied to the film’s exploration of masculinity. Within the hyper-competitive environment of the boarding school, emotional expression is often replaced by endurance. “It’s about keeping everything inside,” Kircher says. “That creates frustration. And frustration creates anger.”
He describes a culture in which young men feel compelled to constantly prove their strength, to themselves and to each other. “It’s like in the savannah,” he explains. “There is one lion, and everyone wants to be the lion. You always have to prove your value.” In this context, vulnerability becomes a liability, something to be hidden rather than understood.
Yet Wild Foxes gently challenges that dynamic, suggesting that communication rather than competition might offer a way out. “If you let go of that frustration, the anger can go too,” Kircher reflects. “That’s why we talk so much now about communication.”
Ultimately, the film is less concerned with victory than with self-realisation. Camille’s journey is not about winning in the ring, but about questioning the path he has chosen, and whether it truly reflects who he is. It’s a subtle but powerful shift, one that resonates beyond the confines of the story.
Asked to describe the film in three words, Kircher pauses before settling on: “Youth, competition, friendship.” It’s a simple answer, but one that captures the film’s essence – the fragile balance between connection and conflict, identity and expectation.
As for what he hopes audiences take away, his response is equally understated. The film doesn’t offer easy answers, but it invites reflection on the pressures we internalise, the emotions we suppress, and the quiet moments of clarity that can change everything.
With Wild Foxes, Kircher cements himself as one of the most compelling young actors to watch. And he’s already looking ahead, having recently wrapped up filming of Lola Quiveron’s second film, Eldorado.
If his performance here is anything to go by, it’s only the beginning.
WILD FOXES is in cinemas 1st May www.conic.film/wildfoxes
Trailer: https://youtu.be/jaVVhLEHHeQ
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