Dir.: Jean-Hugues Anglade; Script: Jean-Hugues Anglade; Phot.: François Catonne; Ed.: Olivier Mauffroy; Mus.: Gabriel Yared; Cast: Jean-Hugues Anglade, Pamela Soo, Alessandro Haber, Wu Hai, Marisa Berenson, Christian Charmetant, Philippe du Janerand, Christophe Odent, Sagayamarie Job, Satya Oblette, Nipul A. Walawage; Prod.: Jean-François Lepetit, Flach Films, 47, rue de la Colonie, 75013 Paris (France), tél.: (1) 44 16 40 00, fax: (1) 45 80 40 01; Sales: F.P.I., 5, rue Richepanse, 75008 Paris (France), tél.: (1) 42 96 02 20, fax: (1) 40 20 05 51 .

The Sprinter is thirty, injury-plagued and thoroughly discouraged. He has decided to hang up his spikes in spite of advice to the contrary from his crusty Italian coach. He's just disembarked from a plane in Paris and from the window of his taxi he sees a magnificent young Indian woman in a sun dress who whizzes by with a croissant she has just stolen from a nearby convenience store. The Sprinter is impressed. The young woman is Tonka, 20, and she can really run. He clocks her barefoot along the highway and is so impressed that he runs after her. The Sprinter can't catch Tonka but the two have "connected". Tonka inhabits a large revolving Coca-Cola can beside the road to the airport and she lives off the kindness of strangers. The Sprinter was once within a hundredth of a second of the European record but now, prone to injury, he can't work up any enthusiasm for the sport. Tonka, on the other hand, runs for the sheer pleasure of it. Though she won't be regimented, she agrees to train with the Sprinter to rekindle his racing spirit. The day of the big race approaches... "A discouraged world-class sprinter's attitude is transformed when he meets a free-spirited young woman who runs on instinct and orange soda in the refreshingly peculiar TONKA... willfully naive but strangely moving tale." -- Lisa Nesselson (Variety)