“Road to Roubaix brought on goose bumps like the cobble stones on the screen. A big round of applause… Thank you for making such a powerful film.’
Benny Zenga, Bicycle Film Festival, Toronto
Directors David Deal and Dave Cooper, bring you Road to Roubaix, a film that celebrates the toughest bike races in the world, Paris-Roubaix A.K.A ‘The Hell of the North’ and ‘The Queen of the Classics’.
Featuring rare interviews with current superstars and legends of the sport including Tom Boonen, Fabian Cancellara, Juan Antonio Flecha, Sean Kelly, Marc Madiot, Stuart O’Grady, and Peter Van Petegem, Road to Roubaix focuses on the 2007 event, an unforgettable year for Australian fans as South Australian Stuart O’Grady claimed victory for the CSC team and became the first ever Australian winner.
Road to Roubaix leads the audience through the brutal, unpredictable landscape that elevates Paris-Roubaix to its epic status with director of photography Patrick Reis and his team masterfully capturing the beauty of the region through stunning panoramic views and footage of the race, riders, and the infamous cobblestones which serve as the star of the film.
Edited by Kathryn Hempel, the film deftly weaves rare behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, and a collection photographs—both contemporary and archival—that make Road to Roubaix an organic visual narrative that engages audiences from beginning to end. This is a rare look at Paris-Roubaix usually reserved for the sport’s insiders.
In some ways, an updating of the awe-inspiring beauty of Jorgen Leth’s unforgettable 1974 feature, A Sunday In Hell, it’s refreshing to see that technology and the modern lifestyle mean nothing on the pave of Belgium – it’s still hell, and it’s only for fools and heroes.
Road to Roubaix premiered at 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival and now, for the first time in Australia, is available on DVD through Aztec International. It is available from all good DVD retailers.