The word “Parkour” is a modification of the French phrase “parcours du combattant” roughly translated as “military obstacle course”. It means moving from point A to point B clearing all obstacles that arise along the way with jumps, spins, climbing, tumbling, with absolute lightness and fluidity. All bare hands, without any help except that of agility and courage. Those practicing Parkour are known as ‘traceur’ or ‘freerunners’, athletes who search for unusual tracing paths in urban environment. Parkour focuses on practicing efficient movements to develop your body and mind to be able to overcome obstacles in a creative way. 

Obstacles are everywhere; by overcoming them, we feed ourselves.
– David Belle

If you Google “Parkour”, the first results coming up will be David Belle and Sébastien Foucan, two legends for anyone who practices this discipline.

As you dig deeper, you will ask yourself… are Parkour and Freerunning the same thing? 

And then: are David and Sébastien still practicing together, or did they go their separate ways? And what happened, what changed when the media circus got its tentacles over Parkour? 

These were our first questions when we started digging into Parkour 10 years ago, when the discipline was still relatively unknown. We began looking for our new ‘heroes’… what we found out is all in our film!

When you overcome, you become.
– Sébastien Foucan

 

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