A SKIN SO SOFT

Jean-François, Ronald, Alexis, Cédric, Benoit and Maxim are gladiators of modern times. The group includes top-class bodybuilders, a strongman and an ex-champion-turned-trainer. As they prepare for future competitions, all share the same obsession: overcoming the limits of their bodies.

By the filmmaker’s own admission, this is “textbook Denis Côté”—an observational documentary without an ounce of cynicism or irony built into the camera’s fixed stare. Here, his look is trained on six bodybuilders who form the core of a study in masculinity that finds the soft alongside the hard.