BIG RIVER MAN

Q&A with director John Maringouin

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A sensation at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, BIG RIVER MAN plays out like Borat meets Werner Herzog, mixed with a high dosage of alcohol. 

In February 2007 Martin Strel began an insane attempt to be the first person to swim the entire length of the world’s most dangerous river, the mighty Amazon. Martin is an endurance swimmer from Slovenia, who swims rivers - the Mississippi, the Danube and the Yangtze to date - to highlight their pollution to the world. Martin is also a rather overweight, horseburger loving Slovenian in his fifties who drinks two bottles of red wine a day… even when swimming.  As Manohla Dargis wrote in her NY Times Sundance wrap-up: “The pivotal figure in the excellent American documentary BIG RIVER MAN, from the resourceful young director John Maringouin (his only other feature is RUNNING STUMBLED), has so much personality it’s a wonder he fits on the screen.”

Winner of the World Cinema Cinematography Award at Sundance Film Festival (2009) and the Wouter Barendrecht Award for Pioneering Vision at the Hamptons International Film Festival (2009), this story is definitely “stranger-than-fiction”.  You can watch a trailer here.

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