Film
Bodybuilder
A French comedy-drama about a troubled 20-year-old sent to live with his estranged bodybuilder father in Saint-Etienne. It's a film about masculine vulnerability disguised as a gym-set buddy story, finding tenderness in the gap between how men think they should be and who they actually are. Funny, awkward, sometimes aching.
If you liked this
The Wrestler2008
Randy the Ram is another portrait of a man defined by his body, wrestling with obsolescence and connection. Darren Aronofsky and Mickey Rourke find the loneliness inside the spectacle, the real person inside the persona.
But It's punishingly bleak in ways Bodybuilder isn't. The film refuses easy redemption or comfort, which some find exhausting rather than moving.

Moonlight2016
Three chapters of a Black man's life, each exploring masculinity and intimacy through different registers. It shares Bodybuilder's conviction that strength and vulnerability aren't opposites, and its willingness to let silences speak.
But Paced like a poem, not a plot. If you need incident and forward momentum, the quietness will feel glacial.

Wild Tales2014
Damián Szifron's six interconnected stories about rage, masculinity and the systems that crush us. Darkly funny, structurally brilliant, and genuinely surprising in tone—it channels male aggression into black comedy rather than nihilism.
But Tonally uneven by design, which means some stories will land better than others. The anthology form prevents deep investment in any single character.

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The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Godfather Part II1974
Both films probe what a father transmits to a son: a role, a body, a way of being. Both ask whether that inheritance can be refused or rewritten.
The two-timeline structure lets Coppola show us how Vincent and Vito Corleone became who they are—the gap between masculine inheritance and actual choice. It's about fathers and sons, duty and desire, and what men pass down beyond DNA. Bodybuilder asks the same questions in a gym.
But Four hours. Epic scope, operatic intensity. If you want something intimate and small, this is the opposite—though no less moving.

More like this (6)
Cold Souls2009
A sci-fi indie about a man who extracts his soul to escape depression. Paul Giamatti and Sophie Barthes make something genuinely strange—surreal, mournful, utterly committed to its premise in a way that feels almost Ballardian.
But Deadpan to a fault. The whimsy can feel precious, and the film moves at a pace that reads as deliberately alienating to some viewers.

Locke2014
Tom Hardy alone in a car for ninety minutes, his life unravelling through phone calls. It's a study in masculine responsibility, shame, and the things we cannot fix. Utterly committed to its constraint.
But One actor, one location, no visual variation. For all its ingenuity, it's fundamentally claustrophobic. Some find it gimmicky rather than gripping.

White Material2010
Claire Denis' fever dream of violence and colonialism. It's not about plot—it's about texture, dread, and the collapse of certainty. The father-son dynamic here crackles with a different kind of tension and abandonment.
But Deliberately fragmentary and difficult. It resists interpretation and easy emotion. Many viewers find it alienating rather than illuminating.

My Winnipeg2008
Guy Maddin's essay-film about home, family and memory. It's eccentric and formally inventive—a meditation on masculine loss told through archive footage, reenactment and hallucinogenic colour. Nothing quite like it exists.
But Wilfully obscure and self-indulgent. Maddin's maximalism can feel exhausting, and the film's refusal of clarity alienates as many as it enchants.

Raw2017
Both use the body as the primary site of identity and shame. Both are French/francophone films that refuse sentimentality about physicality. Both treat transformation as frightening and necessary.
A French-Belgian cannibal coming-of-age horror film about a vegetarian girl who discovers she's a carnivore. It's grotesque, sensual, utterly committed to its body-horror conceit. Like Bodybuilder, it's about learning what your body is and what it needs, just in a very different register.
But Genuinely disgusting at points. Graphic violence, graphic bodily fluids. It's not squeamish about flesh in any sense. Horror-adjacent viewers often find it gratuitously transgressive.

Ikiru1952
Both films are about men confronting their own uselessness and seeking redemption through connection or legacy. Both find tenderness in male vulnerability without making it performative or easy.
Kurosawa's film about a dying bureaucrat discovering meaning in his final months. It's about masculine purposelessness, the father-like instinct to leave something behind, and the gap between what we accomplish and who we are. Shot through with quiet devastation and unexpected grace.
But Black and white, two hours forty minutes, Japanese cinema from 1952. It moves at a pace and in a style that requires patience. The emotional register is entirely inward.

People
Cast
- François Yolin GauvinVincent Morel
Nicolas DuvauchelleFred Morel
Vincent RottiersAntoine Morel
Roschdy ZemVadim- Caroline GaumeCaroline
Adel BencherifLuigi
Dominique ReymondMuriel
Marina FoïsLéa
Xavier BeauvoisLe comptable
Directing
- Roschdy ZemDirector
- Serge MusyFirst Assistant Director
Writing
- Julie PeyrScenario Writer
- Roschdy ZemScenario Writer
- Sandrine BourgoinScreenplay
Production
- Mohamed BelhamarCasting
- Martine CassinelliExecutive Producer
- Roschdy ZemProducer
- Thibault MatteiProduction Director
- Martine CassinelliProduction Executive
- Nicolas JeanpierreUnit Production Manager