100 METERS

Start with how it looks. The animation is rotoscoped, traced from live motion, so the runners move with a weight and looseness that suits the subject. For a story about people pushing their bodies as fast as they can go, that choice does a lot of the work. Coming-of-age stories live or die on whether you believe the people, and here the movement carries much of that.

This is a sports drama that cares less about trophies than about what racing means to the people doing it. It follows two boys across many years, and the mood is reflective and a little serious, with a mostly male cast and plenty of time spent outdoors. Expect a film that treats a hundred-meter dash as something worth turning over in your head afterward.

It is one film from ROCK'N ROLL MOUNTAIN, so the whole thing fits into a single evening. Viewers rate it very highly, and tens of thousands have added it to their lists, which is a decent crowd but a small one for a film this well liked. It streams on Netflix. If you want a sports story with more questions than cheering, start here.