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This modern day fairytale uses footage of dozens of foxes and archive film to reflect the typical experience of urban foxes in Britain and tell the story of a year in the life of a virtual fox family – Miss Fox, and her four cubs, Naughty, Lazy, Sickly and Timid the vixen – as they try to survive on the tough streets of London.
The film follows the fox family as they eek out a living feeding on rubbish left out by their two-legged neighbours and occasionally getting into trouble by making a mess, creating a racket, having sex in public and worst still, feeding on things they shouldn't.
One human, Howard, is very unhappy having the fox family around – particularly after his daughter's chickens get slaughtered yet again. But not all the humans dislike foxes. Alan and June love having Miss Fox around and even store up old chicken livers to put out for her and her cubs to enjoy whilst secretly filming them from cameras hidden in plant pots in the garden.
Eventually the cubs go their separate ways and leave home. The male cubs discover the hard way that life as an urban fox is never easy and fall prey to the continual conflict with humans – one of them being knocked over by a car, the other contracting mange and having to be put down and the third causing too much of a commotion for his human neighbours and being captured by pest control experts, Bruce and Jamie.
Timid the vixen on the other hand meets a fox from the suburbs who has followed the train tracks into town in search of a better life. In true Romeo & Juliet fashion, the fox and Timid fall in love and set up home in a cosy derelict house where the pregnant vixen prepares to give birth to her first litter. The fox – ever the perfect mate – takes care of Timid, scavenging for food left out by their two-legged neighbours. He strays into Howard's garden, who has become so exasperated with his vulpine visitors that he's hired trained marksman and professional exterminator, Bruce, to eradicate them. Armed with a rifle, Bruce lies in wait for the foxes.
Meet the Foxes offers a fresh perspective on the clash between nature and the increasingly urbanised UK.
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