French director Luc Jacquet, who exploded into the world's consciousness at the helm of a little picture called March of the Penguins, has revealed that his follow up will again focus on nature, albeit with a fiction story mixed in. The film, which will be called The Fox & the Child, tells the story of a young girl and her relationship with, erm, a fox. (Apparently Jacquet met a fox when he was 10, and that experience is at the root of this project. No lie.) The film will combine footage of animals in the wild with dramatic, fictional sequences, and will be driven by a voice-over by the young girl as an adult.

The Fox & the Child will start shooting in March, but isn't expected to be ready for released until late 2007. As vaguely silly as the movie sounds, it actually reminds me a bit of 1988's wonderful The Bear (also directed by a Frenchman), which used footage of (trained) animals sort of in the wild to tell a fictional story  - if his film can be done with similar lightness and charm, Jacquet could have another quiet little success on his hands.