The Lonely Road of the Long Distance Runner

By definition, the purpose of the documentary is to tell a story. Jean-Christophe Rosé has invented a new type of sports program for the general audience, which attempts to marry the spectacle of competition with an intelligent discourse regarding its history. This is his fourth film on sports and history, composed entirely of documentary archives, many of which have not been seen until now. In this film, personal and public history alternate, referring to and clarifying the lives of the great champions who left their mark on long distance running: Paavo Nurmi, the Czech Emil Zatopek; the Australian Ron Clark; and the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila. Beyond the history of long distance runners in the context of their own countries, the idea of a great voyage takes shape, from snow to the sun. The long distance runner becomes the embodiment of and reveals this movement from the north to the south, from east to west, Atlantic to Pacific and the Third World, which is the story of the movement of our planet this century.