Schumacher

A documentary about a Formula One driver. Michael Schumacher started in karting. His father worked at a track and the boy grew up there. The family was poor. Tyres and fuel were a problem. The documentary follows his career chronologically. The first race at Jordan, the Benetton years and the Ferrari period. Ferrari had not won for a long time in those years. Schumacher brought his own people and the team was rebuilt. From there the film becomes a story about method. His way of working, his physical preparation, his reading of telemetry, and the hours he spent on the track. The contested moments are not skipped. The collision at Adelaide in 1994 and the move at Jerez in 1997 are inside the narrative. The rivals have a voice too. Damon Hill, Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard speak. The family speaks as well. His wife Corinna, his children and his brother Ralf. What the narrative is interested in is not racing but closedness: its idea is that the man never opened himself to the public and that this was both a defence and a method. The skiing accident of 2013 sits at the end of the narrative. The documentary shows nothing after that day. There is no footage of his condition and the family says only a few sentences. That choice is wholly deliberate. The production was made with the family and the line of privacy was drawn from the start. The archive is wide. Race footage, home video and previously unpublished family recordings are used. Michael Wech and Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns directed. Who it is for: Formula One viewers and anyone who likes sports documentaries. Who it is not for: anyone looking for answers; the documentary says nothing about the last decade and that gap is left on purpose.