Beginning with the poor family but happy together..... When too much in trouble and nervous there is god on the top which answers you maybe by sending another creature (the fox) i personally experienced this moment.... Understanding that sometimes we have to do something terrible in order to prevent something the worse .between the dark times in world war 2 showing fear/ love / loneliness / poverty The last sequence at the end of movie in the wooden house is a masterpiece !! The fathers attempt to read son's letter See it twice.

It was a long time i had not seen a valuable movie keep going making this kind of movies tnx.

I hope this film gets the love it deserves. I went in it knowing there would probably be heart ache. And there was. But the love this man had for his fox and his family was so beautiful yet heart breaking. From his parents selling him off to him having to let go of his fox thinking he wouldnt make it in the war. I wept i cried and cried. The story was besutiful please give this movie some love. It doesnt have to be perfect. But it is a true story. The actor in this film was perfection. He was so hurt by his parents he trusted no one. Except the fox and any animal for that reason, i gooe you will give this w chance. Thank you.

As for the tech, the whole film is made in a format which looks like 1:1 with round corners and frayed sides. The pictures are crisp and the blacks are totally black. Audio was not that superb, it sounded like a wild mixture of mono and surround sound, somewhat artificial to me. Aesthetically it's the total opposite to the series "Babylon Berlin" which too plays around the time when Franz was little, but his parent's home has none of the glamour and the lightness and doesn't even have electricity yet.

The actors do a great job, especially Simon Morzé, who takes the introversion of his character to a level that it would be labelled as "social anxiety" nowadays: He totally keeps to himself, sits aside when others gather and is totally unable to express or explain himself when he would need to. This makes him the target not of teasing but of outright hostility. He more or less floats along with the story while the fox actively drives it, in one instance by approaching the protagonist and in another when it chases the chicken of the French woman Franz gets friends with.

As for the story, that's where the film lacks consistency. In the first (estimated) half hour nothing notable happens until a rich(er) farmer comes to take young Franz with him. Then there's a time lapse and Franz joins the army. Another year later, he's in the camp where he meets the fox, and so on. It kind of drags on and goes into a rush when the next time lapse is coming up. Humour is totally absent although I couldn't help but grin in the scene where the sick kid and the father have a chat because the whole scene was subtitled. Seems like the film makers deemed the Austrian in that part too heavy even for Austrians. I freely admit that I had to peek into the subtitles for »Selchkammer« (pantry) myself, too.

Who is this film for? I'm not sure to be honest. Someone called this a war movie, but I wouldn't recommend it to those who like "Saving Private Ryan". Sure, the whole story wouldn't have happened if it weren't for WWII, but that's merely a story framework and a loud background as Franz is at no point near the front. I'd rather call it a second-row war movie. If I needed to compare it with something, I'd choose "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" or "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas".

However, the final scenes compensate for the drag in a way.