Kings of Pastry

VANCOUVER PREMIERE! EXCLUSIVE FIRST RUN! ► How utterly tasty and surprisingly tension-filled is Kings of Pastry, the terrific new film from celebrated American documentarians Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker. The two are best known, in tandem, for The War Room, a chronicle of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign; Pennebaker, of course, is the elder statesmen of non-fiction who captured Bob Dylan in the seminal 1960s doc Dont Look Back.* The subject of Kings of Pastry is France’s prestigious Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (Best Craftsmen of France) competition, held every four years. The MOF is nothing less than the Olympics of pastry; the film follows several finalists, elite pastry chefs all, as they embark on an intense, remarkably nerve-wracking three days of mixing, piping, sculpting, and sugaring. You’ll be astonished that so much drama, suspense, humour, and heart-wrenching emotion are to be found in competitive pastry-making. And gut-clenching, gasp-inducing catastrophe. There’s good reason why one British critic dubbed this enthralling film “the culinary Hurt Locker”! Colour, 35mm, in English and French with English subtitles. 87 mins.

* For the Record: Dont Look Back — sans apostrophe — is the correct tendering of this title.