Man Running

A young doctor runs in a grueling 24-hour, 100-mile ultramarathon, through rugged mountain terrain and extreme weather changes. It appears that he is avoiding something and that people are looking for him. At the start of the race he happens to meet a Female Runner, who knows him from previous races. They separate but occasionally run together during the race. Over the course of the marathon, the doctor’s physical and mental exhaustion brings on fantasies and hallucinations, and race-related dramas intertwine with the details of his current crisis. He’s tormented by his recent experience with a terminally-ill teenager who wished for medical assistance in dying, against both the legal parameters of the practice and her parents’ wishes. As he thinks back on the details of the situation, he replays scenes in his mind. As night and fatigue come on, he hallucinates, seeing various characters on the trail and finds himself reacting to their imagined presence. It also becomes clear that he has been suicidal himself and that we are perhaps in his mind further than we are in reality. The film faces the idea of assisted dying and suicide with a blunt matter-of-factness but also with a deep emotional core.