Kings of Pastry

The best pastry chefs in all of France compete each year for the "Collar," a prize that takes its mental, physical, and emotional toll on the contestants. In the big restaurants, they are called the , and you can recognize them by the blue, white, and red collars that they wear with a great deal of pride. Their pies and cakes are wild constructions and are prepared according to the most complex recipes. In , D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus follow the 16 contenders during their preparations for the three-day competition in 2007. For months now, chef Jacquy Pfeiffer has been obsessed with his magnum opus: a gigantic raspberry wedding cake. In garages that have been converted into kitchens, the contestants sport surgical gloves and wield gas burners to perfect their creations. And one of the contenders knows how badly things can go in this kind of situation: in an earlier competition, he tripped on the stairs and dropped his massive sugar sculpture. Entirely in the style of cooking competitions like , the men are embroiled in a race against the clock, and everything that could possibly go wrong with these fragile pies does. The camera calmly takes in the tension that ultimately gets released.