18/05/2025 - CANNES 2025: The Belgian filmmaker explores subjects such as the injunction to be virile and the relationship with violence in his first feature film

(© J Glassberg)

Belgian filmmaker Valéry Carnoy talks about his first feature film, Wild Foxes [+see also:
film review
interview: Valéry Carnoy
film profile], presented in the 78th Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnight, in which he develops themes already touched on in his short films - the injunction to be virile and the relationship with violence - through the turbulent trajectory of a very young boxer who, following an injury, questions the purpose of his passion and encounters his first sorrows as an adult. It's also the story of the end of a friendship.

Cineuropa: How did this project come about?
Valéry Carnoy: I remembered a feeling I had when I was a teenager that changed the way I saw the world, and probably my destiny. I was 15, in a sports-study boarding school, and following an accident, I lost a lot of blood. The doctors and my mother decided not to transfuse me, so I was extremely weak for three months and had to stop doing sport. This made me very sensitive to the power struggles between the students. I couldn't defend myself any more, and people started attacking me. This weakness made me question everything, at a time when your personality is still developing. I wanted to fictionalise these sensations and feelings. What interested me was that the male character has nothing to be excluded from: he's a champion, he's admired. But the complexity of group pressure will lead to his exclusion. There's nothing to it, that moment when you become the one being harassed.

In the film, the body changes following an accident, but adolescence is about a body that changes beyond all control.
When you're a teenager, your body changes radically and unpredictably - you're cute one day, ugly the next. When we did the wild casting, we were looking for high-level boxers with bodies like you wouldn't expect. These are hybrid bodies, somewhere between childhood and adulthood. That's another reason why I wanted real teenagers, not young adults playing teenagers.

There is the weakness of the body, and the suffering. Camille crosses the threshold from adolescence to adulthood, and learns that he's going to have to live with suffering.
Yes, a lot of people think: he's got a psycho-somatic problem, he needs to find a solution. But there is no solution, it's like a burn-out. It's as if his brain is trying to warn him that boxing isn't for him, or isn't for him any more. He takes the pressure of the group in his stride, and takes on one last fight. But he has to accept the pain.

What they're going through is their first break-up, the break-up of their friendship.
I like the idea of bromance, because it incorporates love, not sexual attraction, but a deep admiration that makes you feel good with someone. I remember when I was young, it used to frighten me to feel so comfortable with boys. Friendship love at first sight is love. It was important to me that we felt that love, that respect, that admiration. Matteo's disappointment is all the more terrible when he no longer understands Camille. It's an almost amorous disappointment.

What was the biggest challenge?
I have a real obsession with acting. As I had very few professional actors, we did a lot of rehearsals. I have two techniques for ensuring that the acting is good. The first is to make sure that the actors believe in the words and the characters, and that involves a lot of reading and discussion. The other thing, with my cinematographer, was to understand that sometimes it's where you put the camera, the way you place the actors that makes them look bad. It's not necessarily them who are bad with dialogue, it can be us who are badly placed, with the wrong point of view. And then I wanted a lot of nervousness, and the right mix of violence and tenderness.

(Translated from French)