KINGS was inspired by my experience as a new summer camp counselor. In the name of tradition, the boys had to strip naked in the water in front of the counselors. The feeling of being trapped in that crowd is still vivid in my memory. I knew the drag of my discomfort would be short-lived, whereas standing up to the pack I'd worked so hard to integrate would have cost me more. So I gave in. Survive and o unnoticed, then I'll be fine. On the other hand, what put me off the most about that event was that I was one of those who carried on the tradition loud and clear the following summers. I had bowed to the pressure of the group to belong, and now I was one of the ones imposing this humiliation.

This drastic change in my role led me to think a lot about the small cycles of education that insidiously ensure the perpetuation of large-scale toxic behavior between boys. Behaviours in which I have all too often participated simply out of an instinct for "survival". That's what I wanted to recreate with KINGS; a brief moment that looks mundane, but where the stranglehold of a majority that insidiously imposes its codes of conduct would be presented in its simplest state. A short story of friendship betrayal that would embody the workings of these cycles of toxic upbringing, reminding us that it doesn't always take an atrocious humiliation to humiliate atrociously. A film that would bring both the protagonist and the viewer face to face with the dilemma that, in my view, is constantly behind these cycles of toxic education: to belong by imitating or to be left out. In this context of hyper-masculinity, you're either prey or predator; there's no in-between.

By living the whole thing from the point of view of Elias, who becomes as much a victim as an aggressor, the aim was to make a film that wasn't intended to be moralistic, but rather to offer the viewer to take a step back. A film that forces us, as boys, to take a look in the mirror, to see our ugliness. A film that encourages us to take a stand in these cycles of toxic upbringing, to question the role we've already played in them and, above all, to take greater responsibility for our fellow man.

Olivier Côté