About us

La Nuit de la Glisse is founded by a group of visionaries who would go on to spark a genuine social phenomenon: board sports culture, or “la glisse.” The original idea: screening footage of emerging board sports : surfing, skateboarding, freestyle skiing, for audiences who had never seen anything like it on the big screen.

Board sports culture is being invented in real time, and La Nuit de la Glisse is there to capture it on film. In 1978, a young Thierry Donard : passionate about board sports since the age of five, and already the director of his first ski film at thirteen meets American filmmaker Dick Barrymore, a pioneer of action sports cinema. Thierry spends the next ten years working at his side.
In 1984, he directs the first feature released under the La Nuit de la Glisse label with a crew of avant-garde skier and surfer friends: a 90-minute film, the first cinema feature entirely dedicated to extreme sports to be broadcast on French television. The word “glisse” enters everyday French : a cultural and sporting revolution that permanently reshapes the action sports landscape in France and across Europe..

The 2000s mark a decisive turning point for La Nuit de la Glisse. NDG is no longer just a festival: it is now a fully-fledged production company that directs, produces and distributes its own extreme sports movies. Every year, a brand-new feature film : shot in the four corners of the world, in extreme conditions is released on Europe’s big screens. A cinematic ambition, an uncompromising standard of imagery, and a loyal audience that grows with every edition.

More than 45 years after its creation, La Nuit de la Glisse stands as the European reference in extreme sports and action sports filmmaking. Born as a touring festival, NDG is now an independent production company that directs, produces and distributes its own films : one new feature every year, shot in the four corners of the world and released on cinema screens across Europe.
Above all, the event is built around a single, wholly original extreme sports film: never-before-seen footage of surfing, skiing, snowboarding, base jumping, mountain biking, skateboarding and more, shot in breathtaking locations around the globe. By bringing together fans of every board sport in cinemas across Europe and at one unique live event for more than 45 years, La Nuit de la Glisse has rightfully earned its place as Europe’s reference extreme sports film brand.