Cannes Directors’ Fortnight: Valéry Carnoy’s ‘Wild Foxes’ Wins Best European Film Prize

Belgian Valéry Carnoy’s “Wild Foxes” (“La Danse des renards”) has won this year’s Europa Cinemas Cannes Label for best European Film at the 2025 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.

Announced Thursday by Europa Cinemas, ahead of the Directors’ Fortnight closing ceremony this afternoon, the prize is one of three at Directors’ Fortnight and awarded by one of the sidebar’s partners, given the section is non-competitive.

The section’s People’s Choice audience award and a second partner plaudit, the SACD Prize, handed out by France’s Writers’ Guild, will be announced later today at an awards ceremony. There, French writer-director Thomas Cailley (“The Animal Kingdom”) will receive the inaugural Alpine Prize, which aims to highlight “filmmakers who dare to shatter conventions and blaze new trails in French and international cinema.”

Reconfirming his star potential, in “Wild Foxes,” France’s Samuel Kirchner, who scored a promising actor Cesar nomination for Cathérine Breillat’s “Last Summer” (2023), plays Camille, the best young boxer in an elite sports academy, who sustains a minor injury from a fall. But the accident drains his confidence, turning an alpha male top dog into an outcast as he questions the violence he once glorified.

Sharply observed and tautly wound, “Wild Foxes” marks the feature debut of Belgian Carnoy, whose graduation film “Ma planète” already won New Talent best short at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. “Valéry Carnoy’s debut feature is a bittersweet and touching drama,” a Europa Cinemas jury said.

It added: “It is a sports film but without the usual predictable clichés. ‘Wild Foxes’ tackles the burning issue of young male friendship and fragility. The whole ensemble cast is exceptionally strong and really gives the film power and believability.”

On The Party Film Sales’ Cannes slate, “Wild Foxes” is produced by Belgium’s Helicotronc (“The Break,” “Ghost Trail”) with France’s Les Films du Poisson.

Created at the 2003 Directors’ Fortnight, the Label’s juries are made up of theater managers belonging to the Europa Cinemas Network. Label movies receive incentives for their promotion. Europa Cinemas exhibitors are also encouraged to extend the run of label-winning titles at their theaters.

The Label is also awarded at Berlin, Venice, Karlovy Vary and Locarno. Recipients of the Label honored at Cannes in the past include: Last year’s “The Other Way Round,” “One Fine Morning,” “A Ciambra,” “Mustang,” “12:08 East of Bucharest,” “La Pivellina,” “Le Quattro Volte,” “The Repentant,” “The Selfish Giant,” “Les Combattants,” “Mercenaire” and “Alice et le Maire” and “A Chiara” in 2021.