Our Limits

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Director’s note

An athlete drives his daughter and son to run one of their first triathlon races. The boy is five, the girl is seven and he is fifty years old. During the race he recalls the most difficult race he ever did in his life, an IRONMAN.

Giannis Chatzimpeis is a greek leading figure in promoting sports for people with an impairment. He’s the first greek paralympic athlete who managed to finish an Ironman; one of the more strenuous physical and mental activities a human can endure in a single day involving 3.86 km of swimming, 180 km of biking and a Marathon, that is 42,2 km of running.

Why people enjoy this kind of adversity, this kind of trouble, this kind of torture? Why do they challenge their bodies to such an extreme putting in danger their own health? We cinematographically explore this following a child triathlon that takes place 15 km out of Athens, in a sunny day of June, 2018 and in parallel the Ironman of the 6th July, 2014 in Frankfurt.

Someone would think that those races are intended for very few professionals but in that morning of July we were amazed as 3.150 athletes (men and women, from 20 to 75 years old) they all dived in the lake and started swimming in front of our cameras.

The film follows a man with a physical impairment competing equally with a huge able-bodied crowd in a race that puts in danger the health of its participants. This is something that shows how someone wins the battle against his or her disability, something that concerns everybody as we all have some kind of disability to deal with. But in the editing room we realized that Giannis had won that battle since the very beginning of the movie. The task he undertakes is so difficult that once he took the decision his disability disappeared to reveal something wider which is the meaning of sports in anybody’s life.

The kids have to swim only 25 meters and then to cycle 400 m. and to run other 400 but these small distances for a little child imply the same feelings as the marathon distance for a grown up.
Editing in parallel the phases of preparation and training (as well as the trip to the race-venue, the registration and briefing procedures, the courses and the arrival at the finish-line) we discovered that a joyful cinematic symphony springs up from those different scales of space and human bodies. We also realized that the movie expresses, in an unexpected way, the game of discipline we play with ourselves and our children: How we try to fulfill the expectations of the others and how we try to get rid of them. How sports help us to grow up and how, when adults, they help us to maintain our innocence. An incredible spectrum of feelings, common for children and adults emerged: Anxiety, boredom, enthusiasm, fear, joy, fun, sadness, tendency to abandon an overwhelming effort… Tiny fragments of time, before and after the races, found their equivalent for longer periods like those between one generation and another to make the movie appear as the spontaneous miniature of a life time.

D. Yatzouzakis - June 2019

Dimitrios Yatzouzakis

Director
Dimitrios Yatzouzakis

Writer
MFC 4 ALL

Producer
Ioannis Chatzimpeis

Key Cast

"Giannis"

Project Title (Original Language):

Τα Όρια μας
Project Type:

Documentary
Genres:

Family, Sports, Historical, disability, ironman
Runtime:

1 hour 17 minutes 39 seconds
Completion Date:

March 10, 2020
Production Budget:

80,000 USD
Country of Origin:

Greece
Country of Filming:

Germany, Greece
Language:

Modern Greek (1453-)
Shooting Format:

HD
Aspect Ratio:

16:9
Film Color:

Color
First-time Filmmaker:

No
Student Project:

No

Director Biography - Dimitrios Yatzouzakis

D. Yatzouzakis is a cyclist as well as a writer-director of documentaries and fiction. He deals withthemes like passion, conflict, belief and ideology, revealing how mankind survives by virtue of the absurd. He started painting since he was a child. In 1980, he moved to Venice where he studied Sculpture and Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts under Emilio Vedova and Gianfranco Tramontin. In Venice he also got acting techniques of Commedia dell’ Arte working with the “Teatro al’ Avogaria”. In 1983 he won a scholarship from “Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia” in Rome, where he studied film-directing under Gianni Amelio andMarco Leto, screen-writing with Furio Scarpelli and Nicola Badalucco, editing with Roberto Perpignani and cinematography with Mario Bernardo and Beppe Lanci. While studying he was also writing articles and essays for the greek film magazine“ΟΤΗΟΝΕ” (SCREEN).

Back to Greece in 1987 he started writing, directing and partly editing, his first documentaries for the Greek Public Television (GREEK MASTERS IN MEDIEVAL ROME - Best Short Documentary - Thessaloniki 1987, ENCOMIUM IN DORMITIONEM MARIAE -Guardia Sanframondi - Uva D’Argento - 1988).

In 1991 he completed his first fiction, “SAINT PHANOU-RIOS’ PIE”, a featureabout a rural family in the 30s preparing a pie as a vote while their house ends up besieged by blocks of modern construction projects. The movie was presented in Rotterdam, 1992, making part of “Grandeur Local”, a retrospective aiming to reveal the essence of local culture and landscape through a selection of ten presently made films, like JOU DOU (Jhang Yimou) and CLOSE UP (Abas Kiarostami) in juxtaposition with twenty movies from the history of cinema like TONI (Jean Renoir), IVAN (Alexander Dovzhenko),ACATTONE (Pier Paolo Pasolini), etc.

With SAINT PHANOURIOS’ PIE (1991) and his second feature TOUCH ME NOT (1997) Yatzouzakis got distinctions and prizes in festivals like Bergamo, Brussels, Mannheim, Naples, Thessaloniki, Toronto, etc. After his third feature in 2001, FULL PINK AHEADa box-office comedy, he directed a TV series, ALMOST NEVER (2004) and then he steered the wheel back to documentaries. Some of them are SKY WITHOUT PASSPORT (2006) portrait of the Iranian poet, Fereydoun Fariad and I’M NOT HERE FOR VACATION (2011) a TV-series about the life of political refugees in Athens.

Yatzouzakis has also a consistent activity as a film trainer and tutor. Since 2003 he works as a script-analyst for“M.F.I. Script2film WORKSHOPS”, a MEDIA-Creative Europe program and he’s teaching film directing and acting in Athens.

Nowadays he’s completing OUR LIMITS, a feature documentary that explores how children conceive, and if they comprehend, the idea of a Marathon - Triatlhon: one of the more strenuous physical and mental activities an elder can endure in a single day involving 3.8 km of swimming, 180 km of biking and a Marathon run of 42 km.

DIMITRIS YATZOUZAKIS
Documentaries and Fiction

2019: OUR LIMITS
(How children conceive Ironman: one of the more strenuous physical and mental activities an elder can endure in a single day)
Documentary, 78min. produced by MFC4ALL
2017: WISAM - NAJIB - RAJAB
Portraits of three young refugees with disabilities who may become athletes. Commissioned by the
Hellenic Paralympic Committee for the Agitos
foundation.
2012-2017: O.P.L.A. (WEAPONS)
Development of a Greek-Hungarian Feature (in co- production with the Greek Film Centre, ERT, Uj
Budapest Film Studio)
2010-2011: I’M NOT HERE FOR VACATION
Documentary TV series (50min.X16) - Political Refugees in Greece (in collaboration with the Greek Council for Refugees)forERT-Public TV
(Research and Presentation)
2011:SCRIPTWRITER’S SHADOW BOXING
(The last summer of Lewis Cole at Nissyros)
Documentary, 67 min. produced by M.F.I.
2009: 49th THESSALONIKI FILM FESTIVAL - 21 FILM MAKERS
Documentary, 55 min. for ERT-Public TV
2007: 47th THESSALONIKI FILM FESTIVAL - 11+1 FILM MAKERS
Documentary, 52 min. forERT-Public TV
2006: 46th THESSALONIKI FILM FESTIVAL –27 FILM MAKERS
Documentary, 59 min. forERT-Public TV
2005: A SKY WITHOUT PASSPORT
Documentary, portrait of the poet Fereydoun Fariad, 60 min.forERT-Public TV
2004: ALMOST NEVER
TV series, (50 min X 5), written by Katerina Bei,
forERT-Public TV

1998-2004: STINKING BEAUTY
Screenplay written with Nikos Panayotopoulos
(supported by the Greek Film Centre, developed by Focus Film (Budapest), C.L.Productions (Athens)
2001: FULL PINK AHEAD
Feature, 96 min. 35mm. produced by T. Papandreou, Spentzos Films, Ant1 TV
1997: TOUCH ME NOT
Feature, 93 min. 35mm. produced by the Greek Film Centre, Anosis S.A., Cinegram S.A., Solid Ground Films
1997: MAGNETE
Dance film, conceived and choreographed by Maro
Gregoriou, 11 min. 35mm. produced by MAGNETE DANCE COMPANY, supported by the Greek Ministry of Culture
1992: SAINT PHANOURIOS’PIE
Feature, 65 min. 35mm. produced by the Greek Film Centre, Solid Ground Films, distribution supported by “BABEL”programme
1990: IN PRAISE OF THE BICYCLE
Documentary, 62min. 16mm. forERT-Public TV
1989: GEORGIA AND THE DRAGON
Fiction, Telefilm, 40min.forERT-Public TV
1988: FOR THE CITY OF IOANNINA
Documentary, 45min. 16mm. forERT-Public TV
1988: STUDENT’S MOVEMENT AGAINST DICTATORSHIP
Documentary, 50min. 16mm.Research: Olympios
Dafermos, forERT-Public TV
1987: ENCOMIUM IN DORMITIONEM MARIAE
Documentary, 40min. 16mm. forERT-Public TV
1987: GREEK MASTERS IN MEDIEVAL ROME
Documentary, 30 min. 16mm.

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Director Statement

OUR LIMITS

SHORT SYNOPSIS

An athlete drives his seven years old daughter and five years old son to run one of their first triathlon races recalling the most difficult race he ever did in his life: an IRONMAN. It is probably the first feature documentary that explores how children conceive, and if they comprehend, the idea of a Marathon - Triatlhon: one of the more strenuous physical and mental activities a human can endure in a single day involving 3.8 km of swimming, 180 km of biking and a Marathon run of 42 km.

Specifications
Documentary, Color, 1.66:1
Duration: 78’
Language: Greek with english subtitles
Editing: Yorgos Paterakis
Photography Director: Pantelis Matzanas
Production Manager: Dimitra Nikolopoulou, Eddy Diamantopoulos
Camera: P. Matzanas, P. Stergianos, Y. Eustratiades, A. Theos, D. Yatzouzakis
Sound: Tone Studio, Costas FylaktidIs, Yannis Yannakopoulos
Production: MFC4ALL

Written and Directed by: Dimitris Yatzouzakis

Director’s note
An athlete drives his daughter and son to run one of their first triathlon races. The boy is five, the girl is seven and he is fifty years old. During the race he recalls the most difficult race he ever did in his life, an IRONMAN.
Ioannis Chatzimpeis is a greek leading figure in promoting sports for people with an impairment. He’s the first greek paralympic athlete who managed to finish an Ironman; one of the more strenuous physical and mentalactivities a human can endure in a single day involving 3.8 km of swimming, 180 km of biking and a Marathon, that is 42 km of running.

Someone would think that those races are intended for very few professionals but in that morning of July we were amazed as 3.150 athletes (men and women, from 20 to 70 years old) dived in the lake and started swimming in front of our cameras.

The film follows a man with a physical impairment competing equally with a huge able-bodied crowd in a race that puts in danger the health of its participants. This is something that shows how someone wins the battle against his or her disabilities. But in the editing room we realised that Ioannis had won that battle since the very beginning of the movie. The task he undertakes is so difficult that once he took the decision his disability disappeared to reveal something wider which is the meaning of sports in anybody’s life since childhood. OUR LIMITS is probably the first documentary approaching this kind of races from the children’s point of view; exploring how they conceive it and if they comprehend it or not.

The kids have to swim only 25 metres and then to cycle 400 m. and to run other 400 but these small distances for a little child imply the same feelings as the marathon distance for a grown up. Editing in parallel the phases of preparation and training (as well as the trip to the race-venue, the registration and briefing procedures, the courses and the arrival at the finish-line) we discovered that a joyful cinematic symphony springs up from those different scales of space and human bodies. We also realised that the movie expresses, in an unexpected way, the game of discipline we play with our selves and our children: How we try to fulfil the expectations of the others and how we try to get rid of them. How sports help us to grow up and how, when adults, they help us to maintain our innocence.An incredible spectrum of feelings, common for children and adults emerged: Anxiety, boredom, enthusiasm, fear, joy, fun, sadness, tendencyto abandon an overwhelming effort… Tiny fragments of time, before and after the races, found their equivalent for longer periods like those between one generation and another to make the movie appear as the spontaneous miniature of a life time.
D. Yatzouzakis - June 2019