THE FOX
Section: Narrative Spotlight
Director-screenwriter: Dario Russo
Logline: Nick (Jai Courtney), affable heir to a wealthy rural landowner, discovers his fiancée, Kori (Emily Browning), is cheating on him and wants nothing more than to just fix the problem. One night, he captures a rogue Fox (Olivia Colman), and she offers him a trade-off: if Nick lets her live, the Fox will help him save his relationship. All he has to do is push Kori into a magic hole with the power to change her into the perfect partner. Nick follows the Fox’s advice and the Kori who re-emerges seems to be everything he ever wanted. Until her strange new quirks make him question his decision.
Panelists: Dario Russo, Emily Browning, Claudia Doumit
Sales Agent: Protagonist Pictures
Premiered: March 15, 2026
Key Quote: “It was really awesome to bring everybody down to the bottom of the world in Adelaide and shoot a really fucking weird movie,” said Russo. “Look, you can get away with things in Australia that you can’t get away with anywhere else in the world. Put it that way. That’s how I feel.”
Browning noted, “And you get money from the government too, which is really nice.”
Russo explained, “You just fill out a form, you go, ‘I wanna make a movie.’ And they go, ‘OK, yeah. What’s it about?’ ‘Fucking foxes.’”
Deadline Studio at SXSW presented by Redbreast Irish Whiskey.
