No Shooting Time for Foxes

Two friends from Düsseldorf's upper middle class come to terms with bourgeois society. Even though they have mastered the manners of this society, they have nothing but contempt for it - and are perplexed about their own lives. Like the foxes they always encounter on the hunts, the intelligent young men keep dodging them, ducking into the undergrowth, celebrating the closed season they have proclaimed for themselves. To escape from this world, Viktor emigrates to Australia and sells hunting weapons. His friend stays in Germany to write as a journalist about things that don't interest him anyway... After many successful short films, director Peter Schamoni's feature film debut “Schonzeit für Füchse” was invited to compete at the Berlinale in 1966, where his film won the Silver Bear as a special jury prize. In the same year, Hans Posegga received the German Film Award in Gold for Best Music and Edda Seippel for Best Supporting Actress. As one of the co-signatories, Schamoni finally had the ‘Oberhausen Manifesto’ of 1962 released in feature film form. The novel “Das Gatter” by Günter Seuren served as the literary model. Now the generational conflicts prevailing at the time were also intellectually penetrated and artistically presented in the film. "The hunt not only confronts us with the generation of our fathers, with the generation of war, it not only points to atavistic moments, but above all suggests a frightening parallel to the existence of young people: Animals are bred and nurtured in the creel and then released into a brief and false freedom for the purpose of being hunted and killed. It is not a hunt in an original and genuine sense, i.e. a hunt that is necessary for mankind, not even a game or just sport, but a sign of a social standard that is decoratively displayed. The film is not accusatory, nor is it simply sad, because nowhere, not in the narrative, not in the reflections and the abundance of its associations, not in the photography and not in the outstanding actors, does it allow any sentimentality to arise. It is remarkable how - perhaps unintentionally - a suppressed hope shimmers behind the relentless mirror of this depiction of the state of affairs, a poetry that is, as it were, throttled back." (FBW statement “Particularly valuable”)