The Challenge

Name: The Challenge
Genre: Documentary
Released: September 8, 2017
Duration: 69 min
Rating: 69

2017

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Generally favorable reviews based on 7 Critic Reviews

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The Challenge (US Trailer)

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Movie Details & Credits

Kino Lorber | Release Date: September 8, 2017 | Not Rated

Summary: Italian visual artist Yuri Ancarani’s exquisite documentary enters the surreal world of wealthy Qatari sheikhs with a passion for amateur falconry. The opulence of this Middle Eastern gas state is on full display as the men race SUVs up and down sand dunes, fly their prized falcons around on private jets, and take their pet cheetahs outItalian visual artist Yuri Ancarani’s exquisite documentary enters the surreal world of wealthy Qatari sheikhs with a passion for amateur falconry. The opulence of this Middle Eastern gas state is on full display as the men race SUVs up and down sand dunes, fly their prized falcons around on private jets, and take their pet cheetahs out for desert spins in their souped-up Ferraris. The result is a film jaw-dropping not only for its displays of wealth, but for the pure cinematic beauty that won Ancarani the Filmmaker of the Present award at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival. [Kino Lorber]… Expand

Director: Yuri Ancarani

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 69 min

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Critic Reviews

Noel Murray

Dec 7, 2017

This movie is more like a gallery exhibition of moving portraits — each more astonishing than the last. Read full review

Diego Semerene

May 11, 2017

Here the organic and the frivolously material aren't oppositions or rivals, but partners in a spectacle for men's eyes only. Read full review

Fionnuala Halligan

May 11, 2017

Italian artist Yuri Ancarani’s mostly-silent travelogue captures the Arabian peninsula without comment, its repetitive, dreamy imagery providing an insight to an age-old sport which plays out within the trappings of extreme wealth. Read full review

Kenji Fujishima

Sep 6, 2017

With its impeccably framed wide compositions, immersive long takes, and a cross-cutting narrative style that touches on the work of Matthew Barney—or, in a considerably more mainstream vein, Christopher Nolan—The Challenge feels like avant-garde art more than anything else. Read full review

A.O. Scott

Sep 7, 2017

Shot in rich, wide-screen color, with minimal camera movements (except when a small camera is attached to a falcon’s restless head) and almost no dialogue, it is detached almost to the point of abstraction. Read full review

The Film Stage Daniel Schindel

May 18, 2017

With this raw animal rush, you can understand the appeal of the sport, and how one might deign to spend part of a fortune on vicariously experiencing it. But it also demonstrates the ultimate hollowness of extreme consumption. Read full review

Dennis Harvey

May 11, 2017

Loathe to mar his exquisite package with the least hint of vulgar commentary, Ancarani arrives at something that is at once luxuriously alluring and a little too like an advertisement for luxury products — dazzling, aloof, uncritical and fatuous. Read full review

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