#mwff09

Atletu (The Athlete) (Directors: Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew): Perhaps not everyone is as familiar with Abebe Bikila as I am. This remark­able man was the first African ath­lete to win an Olympic gold medal, and the first person to repeat as mara­thon cham­pion at con­sec­utive Olympic Games (Rome in 1960 and Tokyo in 1964). This lovingly-made film brings this great ath­lete some long-overdue atten­tion. Bikila’s life story is even more poignant because of the tra­gedies that befell him later in his life.

In fact, the bulk of the film takes place on the fateful day in 1969 when, returning to Addis Ababa from a trip to his home vil­lage, Bikila’s car went off the road, pin­ning him under­neath. As a result of the acci­dent, he never regained the use of his legs, des­pite spending months of rehab­il­it­a­tion at the then state-of-the-art facility at Stoke Mandeville, England. It was there that he chan­nelled his fiercely com­pet­itive nature into a new sport, archery. Despite having only lim­ited use of his arms, Bikila fin­ished a respect­able fourth in a tour­na­ment against world-class com­pet­i­tion. This tour­na­ment organ­ized by the hos­pital went on to form the basis of the Paralympic movement.

The film’s climax occurs in chilly Norway, where Bikila was invited by the King in 1971 to com­pete in a unique form of dogsled racing. Accompanied by a guide, Bikila had cross-country ski poles to sup­ple­ment his team of three sprint dogs. Despite tip­ping over midway through the race, he recovered enough to beat his opponent. Set to the music of Sigur Rós, this seg­ment is sure to lead to a few wet eyes.

Lakew does a fine job por­traying Bikila, des­pite the lack of phys­ical resemb­lance, and the lib­eral use of doc­u­mentary footage from Bikila’s Olympic vic­tories (as well as from Bud Greenspan’s hard-to-find doc The Ethiopian) make up for the fact that Lakew him­self is not a runner. Frankel and Lakew’s film achieves a lot with a very small budget, and I think if this film is mar­keted to the run­ning com­munity, in the way that Spirit of the Marathon was, it could achieve some modest suc­cess. Hopefully more people will dis­cover the courage and remark­able spirit of this man, who faced tragedy as serenely as victory.

I’ve found a short inter­view with co-director Davey Frankel from the Montreal World Film Festival (where I saw the film), embedded below:

(8/10)

Tagged as: #mwff09, ethiopia, marathon, olympics, sports

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