New UTMB documentary and Q-and-A

Outdoor photography and filmmaking team Outdoor Live recently release a new short documentary on popular ultrarunner Anthony Krupicka racing the the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc, a prestigious race through the Alps of France, Italy and Switzerland.

We caught up with Outdoor Live’s co-founder and producer Francois Tornier for a few questions about the movie.

Canadian Running: What most interests you about ultramarathon running and why did you want to make this short documentary?

At the origin, we’re both, my brother Maxime, co-author, and I, passionate about running in the mountains and practicing it a lot ourselves. We see the world of ultra running as very interesting because of the people that take part in the sport. Mountain runners always are very conscient and aware of the natural environment and their experiences usually go way beyond the sole physical aspect of it. The amazing part, in my opinion, comes when you bring the idea of ultra distances across amazing mountain ranges. That really gives another dimension to the performances those runners achieve and it’s something we were keen on capturing and sharing.

Then, coming from the fact that we often see documentaries that cover races, results and how well you ran during the race, we wanted to focus at the root of the sports and the reasons why people get so involved in those challenges.

CR: Why did you decide on Anton Krupicka and UTMB?

Although Anton is often seen as an iconic runner for his lifestyle and his minimalistic look, we knew he had is own approach to mountain running and interesting perspectives to share.

We decided to do it at UTMB for a couple of reasons: from a logistic standpoint, that was convenient (the entire movie is self-produced and directly distributed, we had to take care of every step ourselves) because of the location. Besides, we grew up close to there, so we have a special attachment to those mountains. But importantly, UTMB also features a beautiful course, with a lot of contrast between the different valleys and the different sections of the race. Since we were going to film it all in one go, we needed this variation of scenes.

CR: Did you have any logistical restrictions in filming the documentary in that location?

The main challenge is to film a live race, where everything is going very fast. As a filmmaker, you need to be constantly ready. If you miss a scene you can’t film it again. We tried to catch up with the runners in as many places as possible, running back and forth along the trail. Another fact to consider is that, in such a busy race, we wanted to separate ourselves from the rest of the footage you usually see. So it was a sleepless 40 hours, a lot of driving, a lot of running to reach places we knew no one would be there, and a a lot of rain too.

CR: Do you have any plans to look more extensively at distance, ultra or trail running?

Yes, for sure. Mountain or ultrarunning is a sport we love and an area where we believe filmmakers can contribute to share the passion for it in many different formats. It is full of incredible and sensible people that have great stories to share and we’d love to take part in this. We’re hoping to repeat s similar creative experiment soon, as well as cooperating with others to bring on better stories and prettier images. The important thing for us is that every time we take on a project, we try to have a clear goal in mind and have a story that we think people will relate to, with different perspectives. As soon as we feel we have enough ideas in mind, you’ll see us out there.