This month’s films look at the lives of those who aspire to achieve sporting or artistic greatness, or find liberation in physical expression. Whether impoverished Chicago street skaters, elite Russian gymnasts, iconoclastic Ukrainian dancers or gold medal–winning swimmers, each has a fascinating story to tell – one that describes a love, and sometimes loathing, for their craft.
Minding The Gap
Nominated for this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, Minding the Gap is an incisive and moving portrait of men drawn to the world of street skateboarding in Chicago. Much more than a compilation of skating footage and interviews, director Bing Liu uses his role as a member of the loose-knit community to fearlessly examine their struggles with masculinity and social pressures, and the freedom offered by skateboarding.
Over The Limit
Russian gymnastics is a realm constructed more of myth than reality. Margarita Mamun is one of the world’s most successful rhythmic gymnasts, and Marta Prus’s documentary follows a crucial year of Mamun’s competitive life: from the 2015 World Championships to the 2016 Olympic Games. As Mamun trains and tensions mount, injuries are sustained, friendships are tested, and expectations and pressures become excruciating.
Dancer
Steven Cantor’s Dancer takes the viewer into the world of one of the most renowned modern ballet dancers, Sergei Polunin. Two years after being the youngest ever principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, and at the apex of his career, Polunin rejected the world of dance entirely. in Dancer, Cantor follows Polunin and seeks to unearth his motivations. Now an actor in blockbuster films Murder on the Orient Express and Red Sparrow, Polunin makes for a fascinating subject.
Touch the Wall
Even non-sports aficionados will remember the resounding success of teenage swimming superstar Missy Franklin, with her multiple triumphs at the 2012 London Olympic Games. Fewer will recall the four-time silver medallist from the Athens and Beijing Olympics, Kara Lynn Joyce. Touch the Wall explores the relationship between the two: how one drove the other, and how success forged a lasting bond.
Yalom’s Cure
The part of the body that is most tested in any sport or human endeavour is the mind. Scholar and existentialist Irvin D. Yalom is one of the most successful and popular psychotherapists, and one of the pioneers of a group-therapy approach to helping people overcome fear and to live well. In Yalom’s Cure, director Sabine Gisiger shows how Yalom has developed principles by which he has lived his life, and has shared them to help many others.
