Yamakasi

Yamakasi (2001) is a French action film you can watch online on iFILM. Written by Luc Besson, it turns seven young men loose across the rooftops of Paris, leaping building to building with no wires and no net.

These aren't ordinary stuntmen. The Yamakasi are the real-life pioneers of parkour, essentially playing themselves on screen. To the kids of the housing estates they're heroes — running up walls, dropping from impossible heights, treating gravity as a suggestion. Trouble arrives when a boy badly injures himself copying their moves and needs a costly operation fast. So the seven decide to raise the money their own way: by robbing the people who have far too much of it.

The reason to watch is the parkour itself — pre-CGI, performed for real, with no harnesses to soften the danger. The plot is thin and almost cartoonish, but the stunts are the whole point, and twenty-plus years on they still hold up. This is one for viewers who want real physics over digital tricks. Stream Yamakasi (2001) online on iFILM.