Director and cameraman
Dmitry Shpilenok
Project Producer
Anna Sukhova
Shpilenok film.
We are Shpilenok Film –
a documentary studio about the nature.
The film “Kamchatka fox tales”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:
Dmitry Shpilenok:
Many years ago I flew to Kamchatka with a dream to make a documentary about foxes. But my first documentary was actually about bears. The bear is a too straightforward beast to love it with all your heart. But foxes! They are charismatic, intelligent, with bright characters, they are ready every minute to deceive you and, as I often joke: they do not want to eat me. Long before the project began I understood that it would take several years for the story of foxes to turn out to be honest, real and true.
I went to the first expedition in 2019, the filming started in 2020. At that time we spent 7 months in the wild, a year later we plucked up the courage to spend 12 months of film observation, from winter to winter. In 2022, a third, semi-annual expedition to make final shootings awaits us. In world practice, this is rare. Big producers would skeptically shake their heads imagining what the budget is required for this. But when you experience a storm on the ocean in a cabin destroyed by a bear in a company of rodents, there is only one explanation why we do this. We are enthusiasts and want to show the story of personalities – foxes who live in the wild. Even the heroes of the future film themselves are sometimes surprised by such perseverance. They definitely laugh, looking at how we pour water out of our boots after a pouring rain or tremble in three jackets when there’s a cyclone. For them, we are ridiculous, funny creatures.
And the greatest happiness is the priceless moments when wildlife, where the rules are cruel and everything is subject to survival, begins to open up and trust.
There is no technical assignment in the project, nature itself is the screenwriter. We do not make a choice for animals, but only observe from afar. I often turn on the camera and don’t know what will happen the next moment. It is impossible to predict tragedies and twists of destiny.
Three years with foxes in their natural habitat is a conscious choice and an opportunity to prove: animals have the same right to exist as we do. Genocide of species, like all the most high-profile crimes, occurs without undue publicity – every year the tragic statistics of extinct species of mammals, fish, birds is replenished. Homo sapiens loses its “mind” in its consumption. But we sincerely believe in a man “civilized,” to whom our ideas are close. And our honest story of foxes is about how beautiful the inhabited planet is and that true freedom does not begin where it is usually looked for.
