01/04/2025 - Julien Menanteau distinguishes himself with a hard-hitting and authentic first feature film, using fiction to delve into the hidden side of the horse-stable world and dreams of glory on racetracks

"It’s the price you pay in this line of work." Competitiveness reigns supreme in many modern-day professional worlds, with all its accompanying successes and toxic excesses, but it rarely reaches the dizzying heights attained within high-level sport. Because pure personal passion can also find itself unwittingly accompanied by ambition, addiction to victory, prospects for social advancement and pressure from those around us, entangled against a backdrop of high financial stakes.

It’s in this maelstrom of high emotions and an incredibly Darwinist setting that Julien Menanteau has chosen to immerse himself via his first fiction feature film, Lads, which is due for release in French cinemas on 2 April, courtesy of ARP Sélection. But crucially, the filmmaker has chosen to home in on a very specific environment whose inner workings are relatively unknown: equestrian training centres, which prepare thoroughbreds for highly dangerous steeple-chase races ("flat ground is child’s play in comparison", "steeplechasing is a bit like a circus act: spectators come for the falls").

In order to initiate us into the mysteries of this closed and coded world, the screenplay penned by the director in league with Nour Ben Salem follows in the wake of Ethan (acting revelation Marco Luraschi, named Best Actor at the Angoulême Festival), a young man from a working class background whom we first see nigh-on naked with an electronic tag around his ankle (his need for speed drove him into car theft). He’s being weighed along with a few other boys his age, who have been hired as lads in a stable known the world over and run by very middle-class Suzanne (Jeanne Balibar). And as trainer Hans (Marc Barbé) stresses from the get-go: "Out of 100 lads, one of them will become a jockey. Your job is to clean out the manure and feed the horses."

But Ethan can’t help but dream and is soon singled out for his pugnacious nature and good hands. Little by little, he moves closer towards his dream, and the racecourse. But he must commit mind, body and soul, and the grey underbelly of this universe is slowly revealed…

Exploring the poisonous atmosphere surrounding gambling activities, true ownership rights to the horses (often held by emirs), potentially rigged races, possible horse and people doping, risks of serious injury, and intensive training programmes (Racetrainer, treadmills, the struggle with weight), alongside firmly anchored traditions, daily life spent on the land ensconced by nature, a love of animals (although you can’t be too romantic, the slaughterhouse is never too far away), a paradoxical mix of solidarity and aggressiveness between apprentice jockeys, and, first and foremost, the spectacular uproar of the steeple-chases themselves, this brilliantly researched film conveys the many sides of this particular world to perfection (with special mention going to director of photography Julien Ramirez Hernan). Carried by its charismatic young actor, not to mention some very solid secondary performances, each of them endowed with their own distinct identities, the film stampedes its way along (its restricted budget imposing relative acceleration of the film’s many events) in a highly realist style blending action and psychology, adrenaline and decoding, and ultimately imposes itself as an incredibly original proposition in the landscape of young French cinema.

Lads was produced by Gloria Films Production (France) in co-production with Pictanovo (France) and Beside Productions (Belgium). Be For Films are steering international sales.

(Translated from French)