LUCKY PUNCH

When small-time boxer Mika makes a lucky knock-out that goes viral, the ensuing media boom floats him straight to stardom and a match against the European Champion that could make his dreams come true – if it doesn’t kill him first!
Unifrance

• Entertaining, with well-written characters, this gently caustic comedy, led by Alban Ivanov, has fun with the deception in the age of social networks, sports business, and lands a few right rights welcome in our wonderful times, where notoriety is, for many, the new Grail, so fragile and fake.
  Translated from the Télé & Jours article excerpt 

• lban Ivanov as a boxing champion, one could think it was a joke. And yet, the forty-year-old actor is amazing in Varante Soudjian’s Challenger. His physical metamorphosis as well as his talent as an actor make him credible as an amateur sportsman who will reveal himself as a real lion of the ring with the help of an agent played by Audrey Pirault.
  Translated from the 20 minutes article excerpt 

• Challenger multiplies the amused tributes to the saga created by Sylvester Stallone: a fight between an amateur and a pro (as in the first Rocky), a press conference turning into a fight (as in Rocky IV) … And when the actor and his director think they are a little too much of their American model, a masochistic gag comes to deflate the egos. Instead of climbing the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts, the hero tumbles down those of Amiens City Hall…
  Translated from the Télérama article excerpt 

• Festival du film français d’Helvétie (FFFH) – Switzerland 2024
• Les grandes premières