Swim for Life

Their names are Jean, Yvette, Gabriel and Christiane. De Gaulle famously said: “Old age is a shipwreck”. Although they may be his contemporaries, this statement does not quite apply to those 4 swimmers. At 78, 88 or even 101 years old, they’re still determined to break new records in competitive swimming. In their film, Maya Lussier-Seguin and Pierre-Olivier François have portrayed these four champions of the Masters category across today’s France during the 2014/2015 sporting season. They share a passion for swimming. And that’s how they rise above their old age and the difficulties that a youth-fuelled society would rather forget all about. As they go about their training, they speak about solitude and how to best avoid it, about the hurdles of life and how they overcame them, about our society that neglects or dismisses our elders and how THEY deal with it all. In Strasburg, Mulhouse or in the suburbs of Paris, in a swimming pool, at a pottery class or during a family reunion, they dispense their mental and physical strengths, their discipline, their optimism that allow them to last and outlast everyone. Swim for life is a documentary about seniors both extraordinary and ordinary, both bearing the weight of a long history and staunchly looking towards the future. Unassuming swimmers in their lane, until, to everyone’s surprise, they climb once again on the podium and break a new record for France, Europe or the World. And that’s where we rediscover their incredible “joie de vivre”.