‘The Row’ First Look: Oscar Winner Bryan Fogel Documents One Man’s Incredible Solo Row From California To Australia – Telluride Film Festival

EXCLUSIVE: There are extreme athletes and then there’s Tez Steinberg. Yes, he’s run about 45 marathons, as well as an ultramarathon of 145 miles non-stop, with a couple of Ironman competitions to boot. But his most audacious undertaking was an attempted solo row from California to Hawaii, a perilous journey of about 1,700 miles. Steinberg’s incredible endeavor is documented in The Row, directed by Oscar winner Bryan Fogel (Icarus), which makes its world premiere tonight at the Telluride Film Festival. We have your exclusive first look at the film in the clip below. The Row is not simply a chronicle of an astonishing athletic quest, but a psychological portrait of a man driven by (and perhaps in flight from) personal tragedy and his family’s complicated emotional history. Director Bryan Fogel Courtesy of Orwell Productions Fogel is an athlete himself (his effort to understand the dynamics of performance enhancing drugs in cycling became the genesis for Icarus). The filmmaker tells Deadline exclusively, “When I first saw Tez’s story, I was struck by both the physical insanity of what he was attempting and the deeply personal journey behind it. Tez’s journey became about something much bigger than an endurance feat — grief, resilience and the universal human struggle to keep moving forward. As someone who grew up in Denver and went to school at CU Boulder, it feels especially meaningful to bring The Row back to Telluride and premiere the film in Colorado.” Not content to merely attempt a row from Monterey, CA to Hawaii, Steinberg later tried to row an even greater distance – from Hawaii to Australia. Both high seas adventures are documented in The Row through amazing footage and evocative animation. Tez Steinberg in his rowboat. TezTalk.com “It’s been a wild ride and huge project to bring to life,” Steinberg writes on LinkedIn in a post he sent out earlier Friday. “197 days alone at sea, filming myself through the most dizzying highs and lows of my life. 600 hours of footage I shot on over a dozen cameras. Hours of thoughtful interviews with my family, who supported this project so generously. A team of full time editors working for months to shape the story. And commitment from a wide team for years – not to mention all the backers of United World Challenge, without whom I couldn’t have even rowed.” He continues, “I’m grateful Bryan Fogel chose to make this film and deeply honored Telluride Film Fest chose to include it in this year’s selection.” Steinberg confesses to being nervous about the Telluride audience seeing the film because of unvarnished moments in it of near-despair and frustration as waves battered his boat, equipment broke, and his body suffered in the heat, rain, and lashing wind. Fogel says there were moments of great trepidation for him and his team as they made the film. “There were many times when we couldn’t communicate with Tez and had no way of knowing what was happening to him thousands of miles out at sea,” he told Deadline. “Watching him face life-or-death situations was terrifying, and then as filmmakers we had the challenge of taking more than 700 hours of footage across two separate Pacific crossings and finding the true emotional story inside it. It was an enormous undertaking, but that intimacy and vulnerability are what make Tez’s journey so powerful.” The Row is directed, produced and co-written by Bryan Fogel. Along with Fogel, the film is produced by Jake Swantko, who also serves as director of photography; Jonathan Woods, and Julia Lull. Executive producers include Leonid Boguslavsky, Bryan Buckley, David Fialkow, Nina Fialkow, and Daniel T . Reiner. Mark Monroe (Icarus) co-wrote and co-produced the film. Co-producers include Ibrahim El Helw, Philip Andrews, Ben Ellenberg, Patrice Innocenti, and Branden McClure. The film was edited by Justin Krook, Collin Kriner, and RJ Buckley, with additional editing by Joe Beshenkovsky. Music is by Adam Peters. In the clip below, Steinberg gives a sense of the psychological duress of his ocean journey.