Director: Jean-Baptiste Durand
Two childhood friends in a small southern French village have spent years locked into the same dynamic — one always mocking, the other always taking it — until a girl named Elsa arrives and forces everything to shift.
What is Junkyard Dog about?
Junkyard Dog centers on Dog and Mirales, friends since they were kids who now spend their days drifting through the streets of their village with nothing much to do. Somewhere along the way their friendship curdled into something lopsided: Mirales needles and humiliates Dog for sport, and Dog, out of habit or loyalty, keeps absorbing it. That balance breaks the summer Dog falls for Elsa. As the relationship deepens, Mirales watches his hold over his friend start to slip, and jealousy pushes him toward choices that force a reckoning with who he has become. Director Jean-Baptiste Durand builds the film around long, loose afternoons and small provincial-town rituals, letting the cruelty between the two leads sit in plain sight rather than escalating it into melodrama. What emerges is a coming-of-age story about outgrowing a friendship that was never equal to begin with.
Cast & crew
Anthony Bajon plays Dog with a quiet, absorbed patience that makes his eventual pushback land hard, while Raphaël Quenard brings a restless, needling energy to Mirales that keeps the character's cruelty believable rather than cartoonish. Galatéa Bellugi plays Elsa, the catalyst who upsets the pair's long-standing dynamic, and Dominique Reymond and Bernard Blancan appear in supporting village roles. Nathan Le Graciet, Mélanie Martinez and Mike Reilles round out the cast of local friends and bystanders.
Context & significance
Set in a nondescript village in the south of France, Junkyard Dog draws on the familiar texture of small-town boredom, where friend groups form early and rarely get questioned until something disrupts them. The film premiered in 2023 and runs a tight 93 minutes, keeping its focus narrow: two friends, one summer, one relationship that finally makes the imbalance between them impossible to ignore.
Where & how to watch
Junkyard Dog is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles alongside the original French audio. A free K-Time account login is required to press play, though the film's page can be browsed without one. K-Time's Farsi interface makes it easy for Persian-speaking viewers abroad to find contemporary French cinema like this one.