Photo: Music Box Films
A new documentary takes a look behind the scenes at a French boarding school with a unique curriculum: horse racing.
Premiering Friday at New York's Cinema Village, Lads & Jockeys tells the story of three aspiring jockeys.
In Chantilly, a small village near Paris, 14-year-old boys and girls enter a boarding school specializing in the education of jockeys where the young students live and breathe horses.
"Everything you give to the horse comes back to you, good or bad" is a vital lesson that they are all beginning to learn...
Their typical day begins at 5 a.m. with cleaning the stables, watering the horses, and polishing the saddles, followed by intense riding lessons. When this exciting but exhausting day is done, their work continues on...all to begin again the next day, and all for the sheer love of horses.
For these young pupils, the transition from their family home to this new routine is brutal. They still share the hobbies of teenagers - flirting, cell phones and PlayStation - but, they exist primarily in a world where the comfort of horses comes before their own.
Pairing the accelerated pace of coming of age with dynamic and lightning-fast horse races, this documentary gives an insider's look into the first year of jockey apprenticeship via the lives of 3 young hopefuls: Steve, Florian and Flavien.
The film is in French with English subtitles and runs approximately 100 minutes. For more information and to view the trailer, click here.