“2DIE4” Shows All the Glory and Guts of Le Mans
First held in 1923, 24 Hours of Le Mans is an endurance race for the most dedicated of race car drivers. The winner of the race is the car that travels the longest distance during the twenty-four hour period. The three drivers per team swap turns behind the wheel so the others can rest. To compete at Le Mans, let alone win, is a feat of resilience for the humans and the car. Brothers Salomão and André Abdala took their cameras to the track of Le Mans to tell the story of Brazilian Formula 1 driver Felipe Nasr as he competed for Porsche. 2DIE4 is a blend of documentary and fiction storytelling that gives audiences a chance to sit in the driver’s seat of one of the most powerful vehicles in the world.
Felipe knows his way around a racetrack. He’s picked up the IMSA Drivers’ Championship three times and won the 24 Hours of Daytona on three occasions. Despite those achievements and multiple F1 seasons, it’s 24 Hours at Le Mans that remains elusive to him. The Abdala brothers are granted intimate access to Felipe as he races as part of Porsche Motorsport’s Hypercar team. With a background in action and motor sports, there are few other directors more able to capture Felipe and his pursuit of the podium.
2DIE4 is not your stuffy, talking-heads documentary. Nor is it constant, heart-pounding action. The Abdala brothers stick to the reality of what Felipe went through during this run at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. There are blindingly fast scenes of laps around the track and quiet moments as Felipe shares a bowl of pasta with his father. What 2DIE4 excels at is the experiential possibilities that shooting in IMAX gives the Abdala brothers. The film gets the viewer as close as visually possible to the driver’s seat of a car going hundreds of miles an hour. Sometimes at night, sometimes rainy, and sometimes both.
The mere existence of 2DIE4 is the result of a filmmaking gamble. There was no promise that Felipe would make it past the first lap. Anything and everything can, and probably has, gone wrong for teams at Le Mans. Cars were not built to run for twenty-four consecutive hours, yet that’s what this race asks them to do. From the filmmaking side, so much has to be captured in real time. If they missed a shot of something important for Felipe’s story, there was no “take two.” 2DIE4 required the Abdala brothers to always be on the tip of their toes.
For race fans of any kind, 2DIE4 is a must-see on the biggest screen possible. With roaring engines, real emotions, and an unyielding sense of urgency, 2DIE4 is a breath of fresh air. There’s no CGI, no script, no plan. This is a high-stakes sporting event playing out without any sort of intervention from the film crew. 2DIE4 is action, reaction, and the aftermath, presented without any pretension. It’s the dream of one man presented in glorious IMAX.
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