BORN TO FLY Directed by Brennan Robideaux
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Director of feature documentary Born to Fly Brennan Robideaux was twenty-one years old, living back in his hometown of Lafayette after dropping out of college, when he decided he wanted to tell the story of Mondo Duplantis. “I've been a filmmaker for all my life. I'm always chasing stories. And naturally, at that point, it was a real make or break moment: I'm either gonna really do this thing or it was time to find another career path, frankly,” Robideaux said. “At that time, this kid in our hometown, Mondo Duplantis, was making small little splashes in our local paper…he jumped an incredible height. Everyone in Lafayette had kind of heard of his family, but didn't know too much about them.” There was some lore surrounding the Duplantis family, according to Robideaux. Some knew that Mondo’s father Greg had been a record-breaking pole vaulter himself, and his mom was a successful track and field athlete from Sweden. People talked about the fact that the Duplantis’s had a pole vaulting pit in their backyard. “But then I think seeing him appear in The Daily Advertiser—just a little blurb about how he had broken an age group world record, which he had been doing all of his life, come to find out—but that was just like that lightbulb moment.” Given that Duplantis was only in high school and had already achieved record-breaking success, Robideaux wondered what he would accomplish next—and wanted to document it. He got Duplantis’s number and texted him, asking if he could make a documentary about him (“because you know, seventeen year olds, they don’t talk on the phone”). After getting the go-ahead, Robideaux dove straight into filming, wheeling his camera gear from his parents' house where he was living at the time across the street to Lafayette High School, where Duplantis practiced. “He had something in him . . . he grasped the concept of the sport better than anyone had ever seen. And he quickly surpassed his brothers, even at a young age,” Robideaux said. “And his development was extraordinary. I mean, it's not a joke when they say he was legitimately a prodigy.” Robideaux said he just dove right into the project, chuckling retrospectively at his own boldness. “I figured, screw it. I'm going to jump in the deep end, to a multi-year type doc project of me following them, and just see kind of where it goes.” Since the project was self funded, the production process wasn’t particularly glamorous. “I slept on the floor of Mondo’s hotel room for like three and a half years, four years straight. I basically ate peanut butter out of the jar for like, literally three years straight,” Robideaux remembered. “[Duplantis] was getting invited to these massive competitions and starting to really excel. And so I'd have to get to Europe, I would just sleep on his floor.” As Robideaux sunk more of his savings and time into filming Duplantis, the stakes became increasingly high on the gamble—or “calculated risk”—he had taken on the young athlete. Yes, the heights of his jumps were impressive and steadily increasing, but as Robideaux learned later, oftentimes childhood athletic success does not translate into adulthood. “It was definitely a risk factor of even doing this at all, but I was young and dumb enough to go ahead and give it a shot,” he said. It became clear as he filmed, and solidified when he edited, that the core of Duplantis’s story was a tale of a bond between a father and son, and their mutual love for a unique sport. “You know, there was that magic of a boy falling in love with the same thing that his dad also excelled at, and wanting to impress his father, wanting to challenge himself,” Robideaux said. “You know, there's just that beauty of mutual love of something. And when you think about it, being a unique sport like this, to me, that's kind of magic. I love that. I love that it's untraditional, and so that's really what the film became.” Born to Fly will have its North American Premiere at the Austin Film Festival on October 29 at 3:30 pm and November 1 at 4 pm. It will also be shown at the Prytania Theatre as part of the New Orleans Film Festival on November 5 at 7:45 pm. It will receive its hometown premiere at the Acadiana Center for the Arts as part of the Southern Screen Festival on November 18. borntoflyfilm.com. •