Pral

Roaming the streets on their tandem bike, young French post-punk musicians Micka and Pierre are filled with despair as they desperately search for a crowd to play to.

A day like any other, Jacques has a desire : to eat a croissant, the last one in a bakery display. An insignificant act but not without consequences.

Directed by Paris-based filmmaker Joaquim Bayle, PRECIOUS builds on Carhartt WIP’s last full-length skate project INSIDE OUT, which was released in 2022. The name of the project derives from the delicate yet gruelling process of shooting tricks on film. “Now that I understand skateboarding a little more, I wanted to pay tribute to its subversive form, its poetic form,” says Bayle of the feature, describing a “precious feeling I had when I started skateboarding and which, as I have gotten older, I've tended to forget.” In encapsulating this, he employs a multi-sensory approach. Warm, gauzy footage is punctuated by shutter clicks and black and white photography. Quiet moments of reflection are interrupted by the sound of wheels on concrete. Softly spoken word drifts in and out of a soundtrack of sludge metal and synthwave.

With SUCCESSFUL MAN, director Andrew Duncan crafts a clever and existential comedy about a man trapped in increasingly absurd stock footage scenarios.