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Poster for The Glacier Fox
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Released
1978 · FILM

The Glacier Fox

“In the Quest of the Northern Sun”

Directed by
Koreyoshi Kurahara
Written by
Walter Bloch, Koreyoshi Kurahara
Runtime
116 min
Language
JA
Documentary

Synopsis

Director Koreyoshi Kurahara chronicles a year in the lives of Flep and Leila, two foxes living in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, where the freezing winters are long and the mild summers short. After Flep defeats another male fox to become Leila's lifelong partner, they mate and raise a litter of five kits. With their family complete, the group must contend with human interference in their habitat, such as chicken farms and snowmobiles, and struggle against the debilitating cold of winter. The animals experience both triumph and tragedy, as the law of this harsh land proves – only the strong survive.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 16

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Carlos AlaridShot by Tsuguzo MatsumaeScored by Masaru Sato

Box Office

1978 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.0× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$8.8M

Budget$4.5M
Worldwide gross$8.8M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Der Gletscherfuchsde

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