Alexi Pappas’s movie Olympic Dreams premieres at SXSW

Audiences at the multimedia festival SXSW (South by Southwest) had a chance to see Olympian Alexi Pappas’s new movie, Olympic Dreams, in Austin, Texas last week. The film was shot during the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, which Pappas described in an interview with BuzzFeed News afterwards.

RELATED: Alexi Pappas’ new movie, Olympic Dreams, to premiere at SXSW

Pappas, who co-directs and stars in Olympic Dreams, set a national record for Greece in the 10,000m at the 2016 Olympics in Rio (31:36). She debuted the marathon at Chicago in 2018, finishing in 28th place with a time of 2:43:38. Pappas also co-directed and starred in an earlier film, Tracktown, in 2016. 

Olympian @AlexiPappas speaks with #AM2DM at SXSW about her film #OlympicDreams pic.twitter.com/K2Qx90zij8

— AM2DM by BuzzFeed News (@AM2DM) March 16, 2019

“Chasing an Olympic dream is not unlike chasing a filmmaking dream,” says the Olympian, actor and filmmaker. “You never know if you’re going to make the Olympic team, and you never know if your movie is going to play at SXSW.”

Olympic Dreams is a series of vignettes featuring Penelope (played by Pappas), a slightly insecure cross-country skier, and Ezra (played by comedian Nick Kroll), a volunteer dentist in the Olympic village. Pappas’s husband, Jeremy Teicher, co-directed and shot the film as well as recording the sound.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu7iuT5D9Vk/

Olympians Jamie Anderson (snowboarding) and Gus Kenworthy (freestyle skiing) also appear, playing “a sort of fictionalized version of” themselves.

Pappas is also working on a book of essays, to be called Bravey, to be published by Random House. 

Pappas hopes to run for Greece again in the 2020 Olympics.