The Runner follows Darius Sam, a 20-year-old from the Lower Nicola First Nation in Canada, as he takes on one of the most intense and exhausting endurance tests imaginable: a 100-mile run. The dramatic landscape of Lower Nicola in British Columbia, which is located on Nlaka’pamux traditional territory, proves an apt setting for such an imposing undertaking. The Syrian Canadian filmmaker Amar Chebib captures Sam’s journey with cinematic grandeur, documenting him as he runs from dusk till dawn and across snow-capped mountains, pine forests and vast open cattle plains.
Sam’s intensive training and the culminating run are inspired by his desire to raise awareness around addiction and mental illness, and a personal attempt to grapple with how these issues have affected his life. The story of his run unfolds alongside windows into his past, which detail how his world has been shaped by the fetal alcohol syndrome he was born with, early adoption, and later struggles with suicidal depression. Through these parallel narratives, Chebib illustrates how ultramarathon running became essential to Sam’s survival and personal growth, forcing him to fight through lingering feelings of ‘unworthiness’. ‘I invented this person,’ Sam reflects – a moving testament to the distances people can go, both physically and mentally, when supported by community and armed with discipline, and even after a lifetime of ‘feeling lost’.