In the cinema, Kina and Yuk, a couple of polar foxes, get lost on the ice floe

“Kina and Yuk” are in love. Because of the melting ice, they find themselves separated and alone on one end of the ice floe. A fable of love and survival that confronts us with our impact on nature.

It’s a love story between two polar foxes, who become actors in an extraordinary cinematic adventure. The film Kina and Yuk enters theaters on Wednesday, December 27.

Inspired by a photo of a fox trapped on a drifting ice floe, a Norman director, Guillaume Maidatchevsky, finds his starting point in the brutal reality of nature. “I wondered where this fox came from, what his journey was, and what he would become,” he shares, thus revealing the genesis of the film. The two lovebirds have everything to be happy, but nature, or rather the human species, has decided otherwise. As Yuk went hunting, the block of ice he was on broke and took him away, leaving Kina, who is carrying their offspring, alone. They will have to brave all the dangers and explore new territories in the hope of being reunited in time for the birth of their young. Very quickly, the spirit of adventure takes over us.

Foxes become actors

It must be said that the line between fiction and documentary is fine. Four cameras were constantly trained on the two foxes. Not sure they realized that they were suddenly becoming actors. “I really wanted to have the springs of a pure adventure fiction, both dramaturgy, doubts, anxieties, happiness, and I had to find that through a wild animal”, relates the director.

“When faced with an actor, you can say: ‘that scene wasn’t emotional enough, you can do it again’, but when the actor is a wild animal, that’s not possible.”

Guillaume Maidatchevsky, director

at franceinfo

Born in a sanctuary in northern Canada, Kina and Yuk live in complete freedom. When they were little, animal coaches accustomed them to human presence, while preserving their wild nature. If they were filmed up close, it was strictly forbidden to touch them, both for the safety of the film crew and for their integrity. The scene that moved the director the most was the one where Kina and Yuk look at each other, then look at the camera and fall asleep, snoring peacefully, even though these animals are suspicious by nature. This confidence is seen in the image with tight shots which arouse wonder and which also question us.

An Arctic Romeo and Juliet

The landscape is white, pristine and fragile, striking from the start. At a glance, this fox couple manages to take us to a little-known region, the Yukon, in Canada. The film was themmed in extreme temperatures of -40 degrees for six weeks. “The crunching is not normal, the temperature is much too high this year. It looks like a monster lurking in the icy bowels.” It is the melting of the ice, which Virginie Efira describes, voice-over throughout the story. The scene calls out.

“I found it to be a good illustration of global warming, we saw the ice pack melting“, underlines a spectator. The images force us to recognize an undeniable reality: the Arctic is warming twice as quickly as the rest of the planet.

“Kina and Yuk”, to be discovered from Wednesday December 27, 2023 at the cinema.