From the over 50,000 runners in the annual New York City Marathon, Nicolas Heller’s latest film, 26.2, which premiered Monday at the AMC Lincoln Square, spotlights the life-affirming, inspirational and personal stories of four fervent participants.
Heller (aka New York Nico, aka my son), says the 26.2 mile five-borough race is “the best day of the year.” After watching this extraordinary film and listening in on the courageous people who train year-round simply to ensure that they’ll crossed the finish line, I now understand why. I had not paid much attention to the race before, but if this were a recruitment film, it could not have done more to totally alter my thinking. The marathon is an incredible feat of physical determination that embodies and emboldens a broad range of human emotions: compassion, pride, fear, faith and love, among them. Exhaustion gives way to euphoria. Individualism provides solid ground for inclusion.
26.2 follows a retired math teacher (who runs for charities and finished dead last in the 2023 race), an NYPD administrative aide (a cancer patient who doesn’t like running at all but is fanatical about the race), a public defender (who suffered a life-changing house fire), and an elevator mechanic (who survived a paralyzing stroke).
This film triggered in me every emotion that can be experienced in 35 minutes. It is not just for runners, aspirants and marathon fans, but for a universe of people who embrace hope. You can watch it here.
The poster for 26.2 is (believe it or not) a painting by Jake Scharbach, with the creative direction of Nick Ace. “Last month I got a call from @nickace_ asking if I would be interested in a commission to do an oil painting combining a selection of film stills for an upcoming documentary film,” Scharbach detailed on Instagram. “It was an interesting project harkening back to the hand-painted marathon illustrations of the past, however this was to be more dark and ambiguous, a blurred runner and a panel of heavily cropped eyes, to be finished with the glazing style of the 16th century. Personally I also thought of influences like Gerhart Richter and Franz Kafka.”
The post The Daily Heller: Every Marathon Runner Has a Story. Here Are Four appeared first on PRINT Magazine.